Great Blizzard of 1888

Blizzard

Date: March 11-14, 1888

Place: Northeastern United States

Result: 400 dead, $7 million in property damage

The Great White Embargo, the Great Blizzard of 1888, the White Hurricane—whatever name the folklore legends give it, the March 11-14, 1888, snowstorm was one of the biggest to hit the northeastern United States. A roaring blizzard, sustained for four days by hurricane-force winds, extended from Maryland to Maine. It claimed 400 lives and caused $7 million in property damage. Two hundred boats off the coast and in harbors were swamped and sunk, taking the lives of about 100 seamen. Countless numbers of wild birds, animals, and livestock froze to death. New York was hardest hit, with 200 deaths reported there alone. The stock exchanges on Wall Street closed for three days.

The day before the blizzard, March 10, was unusually mild. At 9:30 p.m. the thermometer registered in the mid-50’s. It had been the warmest day of the year, during one of the mildest winters in seventeen years. However, the following afternoon—Sunday, March 11—a drizzling rain turned to a downpour, and the temperature steadily fell.

If the meteorological equipment of the time had been more sophisticated, and communication between Washington, D.C., and New York more efficient than telegraph messages, perhaps the U.S. Signal Service’s weather observatory in New York could have been warned about a severe storm brewing off the coast of Delaware. There, two massive weather systems were headed for collision. Frigid Arctic air, coming from northwestern Canada, was traveling south along the eastern coast of North America at 30 miles per hour. Warm, moisture-packed air from the Gulf of Mexico headed north, into the Arctic air. The two huge systems clashed, resulting in a winter hurricane saturated with moisture and fueled by violent winds. As the system turned to travel northwest, it picked up speed.

The first winds of the storm reached small craft and fishing boats on Chesapeake Bay late Sunday afternoon. The mercury plummeted, and the downpour quickly changed to a blinding wall of snow. Anchor cables on boats snapped, causing them to run aground or smash into each other. Vessels in the open waters were overtaken by the churning waters and sank. The storm, dubbed “The White Hurricane,” moved from Chesapeake Bay north to Boston.

By midnight in New York, the rain had been replaced by snow, and the winds were gusting to 85 miles per hour. To qualify as a blizzard, the wind must blow at 35 miles per hour or more. During a hurricane, winds near the eye range from 74 miles per hour to as much as 150 miles per hour or more. The Great Blizzard of 1888 was virtually a hurricane with blizzard conditions. According to an eyewitness account from Arthur Bier, recorded in Great Disasters (Reader’s Digest Association, 1989), “The air looked as though some people were throwing buckets full of flour from all the roof tops,” sometime after midnight on March 12, 1888.

Disaster in New York City. New Yorkers awaking Monday, March 12, found 10 inches of snowfall with drifts as high as 20 feet. In many areas one side of the street was blown free of snow, while the other side had snow piled to the second-story windows of buildings. Used to heavy snowfalls and trying to go about their business as usual, many New Yorkers bundled up against the weather and headed off to work. As the temperature continued to drop, and the snow showed no sign of letting up, the city slowly ground to a halt. Horse-drawn street cars struggled to remain on snow-covered tracks. The elevated trains ran very slowly, eventually coming to a standstill on frozen tracks. Commuters waited in vain, among the swirling snow and falling temperatures, on elevated-train platforms for trains that did not arrive. An estimated 15,000 passengers were stranded in the trains, elevated above the streets, across the city. With no way to get down they were at the mercy of enterprising “entrepreneurs” who carried ladders to the train cars but charged a steep fee of one dollar per passenger for the short climb down to the street. One train, stalled on the tracks between stations, was hit by another from behind. The collision killed an engineer and injured 20 passengers. Winds picked up to nearly 100 miles per hour. Abandoned streetcars were pushed over in these winds.

Fire stations were also immobilized. Many people tried lighting fires in their homes to keep warm. When the fires raged out of control, fire trucks could not reach the victims, and the raging winds spread the fire. Property damage from fire alone was estimated at several million dollars. Those left homeless or trying to survive with walls or roofs missing from wind or fire damage often succumbed to the elements and died of exposure.

The financial district on Wall Street actually shut down for three days, something unheard of even today, because only 30 of 1,100 members of the stock exchange showed up Monday morning. People braving the elements on foot were later found frozen to death in snowdrifts along the sidewalks. One such victim was George D. Barremore, a merchant from the financial district. Finding the elevated trains closed down, he decided to walk to work. He apparently collapsed in a snowdrift and froze only four blocks from his home.

Those who did make it to work found the buildings deserted and the return trip home too hazardous to make. Many people camped out in hotel or business lobbies. By Monday evening New York City was at a standstill. Thousands were stranded in a city with hotels so overcrowded that cots were set up in hallways and even bathrooms. Author Mark Twain was one such reluctant visitor. Having come in from Hartford, Connecticut, Twain is said to have sent word to his wife that he was “Crusoeing on a desert hotel.” Some blizzard-tossed refugees found shelter on cots in the city’s public buildings. One such location was the city’s jails. At Grand Central Station an estimated 300 people slept on benches, since normal passenger traffic was immobilized. Business was brisk at pubs and places of entertainment, such as Madison Square Garden, where circus man P. T. Barnum performed to crowds of more than one hundred.

On Tuesday the East River was frozen. The ice bridge, connecting Manhattan and Queens, rarely formed because of the flowing waters of the river. Some adventurers bravely used the ice bridge as a shortcut between the two cities. When the tide changed, however, the ice bridge shattered, tossing some foolhardy travelers into the freezing waters of the river. Nearly 100 other adventurers were trapped on the ice floes and narrowly escaped with their lives.

On Tuesday afternoon the snow tapered off and the winds died down. By midday the thermometer began climbing from its 5-degree-Fahrenheit low. Wednesday, March 14, saw the snow yield to flurries. In the aftermath, a total of 20.9 inches had fallen, with drifts as high as 30 feet in Herald Square. This snowfall record would exist for at least the next sixty years.

Other Locations. New York saw light snowfall compared to other locations such as New Haven, Connecticut, which accumulated 45 inches. The driving winds there had also packed the snow into hardened drifts. Of the eastern cities, only Boston managed to avoid the worst of the storm. Alternating rain and sleet eventually led to an accumulated 12 inches of snow, but it did not bring the city to a standstill.

Traveling from Maryland to Maine, the Great Blizzard of 1888 affected one-quarter of the American population. High winds toppled telegraph poles from Washington, D.C., north to Philadelphia. Rail lines were blocked by the mangled cabling. In Philadelphia, freezing rain glazed the streets on March 12. When snow did fall, the ice-glazed streets were buried beneath 10 inches of drifts. Keene, New Hampshire, was blanketed in 3 feet of snow, and nearby Dublin received 42 inches. New York’s state capital, Albany, received 47 inches, and Troy, New York, recorded 55 inches of snowfall—perhaps the largest amount of the Great Blizzard of 1888. City officials ordered paths plowed through the snow rather than having the snow completely removed. In New York City, men and boys eagerly worked at the drifts—using axes and picks on those of hard-packed snow—and earning between $2 and $10 for shoveling people out. An estimated 700 wagons and 1,000 workers cleared away the snow, dumping it along the piers of the Brooklyn Bridge. The public bill for the cleanup came to $25,000.

Aftermath. By Friday, New York City was that back to nearly normal. Bonfires lit to warm pedestrians, as well as the warming March sun, soon melted the mounds of snow piled alongside buildings and sidewalks. Cleaning up, restoring power, and counting the dead was a long task for the citizens. Melting snow revealed not only frozen bodies and dead animals but also heaps of debris discarded during the heavy snowfall. In areas outside New York hit by the blizzard, the melting snow revealed the bodies of thousands of dead birds, animals, and livestock.

The search for survivors was intense. In Brooklyn, at least 20 postal workers were pulled from the snow unconscious. New York’s Republican Party leader, Roscoe Conkling, had collapsed in the snow from exhaustion. He became ill and died on April 18, making him the final victim of the White Hurricane.

Despite the devastation and loss of lives as a result of the Great Blizzard of 1888, it did have a positive impact on the largest cities shut down by the storm. To ensure that communications networks in the Northeast would never again be disrupted, the U.S. Congress decided that telegraph and telephone wires and public transit routes would be moved underground. Vulnerable gas lines and water mains, located above ground, were also redirected underground to safety. Within a quarter century, the subway systems for New York and Boston were proposed. New York’s subway system was approved in 1894, with construction beginning in 1900.

For Further Information:

Allaby, Michael. Dangerous Weather: Blizzards. Rev. ed. New York: Facts On File, 2003.

Cable, Mary. The Blizzard of ’88. New York: Atheneum, 1988.

Davis, Lee. Natural Disasters: From the Black Plague to the Eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. New York: Facts On File, 1992.

Erickson, Jon. Violent Storms. Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books, 1988.

Laskin, David. The Children’s Blizzard. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Murphy, Jim. Blizzard! The Storm That Changed America. New York: Scholastic Press, 2000.

Ward, Kaari, ed. Great Disasters. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association, 1989.

Watson, Benjamin A. Acts of God: “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” Unpredictable Guide to Weather and Natural Disasters. New York: Random House, 1993.