Great Blizzard of 1888: The Storm That Buried the Northeast

The Great Blizzard of 1888 was one of the most severe snowstorms in American history. Between 11 and 14 March 1888 it dumped up to 50 inches of snow across the northeastern United States, whipped it into enormous drifts and killed more than 400 people. It paralysed New York City for days and helped convince the city to move its wires and, eventually, its trains underground.

Background: a mild end to winter

Early March 1888 had been unusually mild along the East Coast, and many people expected spring. On Saturday 10 March the forecast from the US Army Signal Corps, which then ran the national weather service, called for clearing weather followed by rain. Nobody predicted a major snowstorm.

In reality two weather systems were converging. A cold air mass was moving south from Canada, while a moist storm system tracked up the Atlantic coast. When they met near the coast on Sunday 11 March, the result was an intense, slow-moving storm, known to forecasters today as a nor’easter, that stalled off southern New England.

What happened

Rain turned to snow during the night of 11 March. By Monday morning, 12 March, the snow was falling heavily, driven by sustained winds often above 45 miles per hour (about 70 km/h) and higher gusts. Temperatures fell steeply, and the wind piled the snow into drifts that reached the second floor of houses. Some of the most famous drifts, in Brooklyn and in upstate New York, were reported at 40 to 50 feet high.

Snow totals were extraordinary. Parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts received 40 to 50 inches (about 100 to 130 cm), and Saratoga Springs reported about 58 inches. New York City recorded around 21 inches, but the wind made it feel far worse. The storm continued in places until 14 March.

New York, then the largest city in North America, came to a halt. Elevated trains stalled between stations, stranding passengers, and horse-drawn streetcars could not move. Thousands of people were trapped in offices, hotels and stores. Fire engines could not get through the streets, and fires burned with little check. Food, milk and coal ran short within days.

Communications cut

The blizzard brought down thousands of overhead telegraph, telephone and electric wires. Cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia were cut off from one another. According to well-known accounts, some messages between New York and Boston had to be sent by undersea cable via London.

The storm also hit shipping hard. Around 200 vessels were wrecked, driven aground or badly damaged along the coast between Chesapeake Bay and New England, and many sailors died. Pilot boats waiting outside New York harbour were among the losses.

Key people

Roscoe Conkling, a former senator from New York and one of the most powerful Republicans of his era, became the storm’s best-known victim. On 12 March he tried to walk from his Wall Street office uptown through the storm, a distance usually given as about three miles. He reached Union Square before collapsing from exhaustion, fell ill and died on 18 April 1888.

Hugh J. Grant, who became mayor of New York in 1889, is remembered for what followed. A state law already required overhead wires to be buried, but companies had resisted. Grant ordered city workers to cut down the poles, forcing companies to place their cables underground.

Consequences

The death toll is usually given as more than 400, around half of them in New York City. Many people died in the streets, in stranded vehicles or at sea. Property losses were high but are hard to measure precisely, since damage was spread over many states.

The most lasting effect was on city planning. Buried wires became the norm in New York and other large cities within a few years. The paralysis of the elevated railways and streetcars strengthened the case for an underground railway like London’s Metropolitan Railway. New York’s first subway line opened in 1904, after years of political and financial debate in which the memory of the blizzard was one argument among several.

The storm also exposed the weakness of weather forecasting. In 1890 Congress transferred the weather service from the Army to the new civilian Weather Bureau within the Department of Agriculture. The blizzard was not the only reason, but it was a vivid example of the need for better forecasting.

Legacy

The blizzard became part of American folklore. Survivors formed the Society of Blizzard Men and Ladies of 1888, which met on anniversaries for decades. Photographs of buried streets and of the Brooklyn Bridge area under snow were widely reproduced, and later severe storms were routinely compared with it.

Meteorologists still study the event as a classic example of a rapidly intensifying coastal storm. It remains a benchmark for snowfall and drifting in the northeastern United States.

Timeline

• 1888, 10 March: Forecasts for the Northeast call for rain and clearing weather.
• 1888, 11 March: Rain turns to snow overnight as cold Canadian air meets a coastal storm.
• 1888, 12 March: Heavy snow and gale-force winds paralyse New York; Roscoe Conkling collapses walking uptown.
• 1888, 13 March: Snow continues across New England; cities remain cut off.
• 1888, 14 March: The storm finally weakens and clearing begins.
• 1888, 18 April: Roscoe Conkling dies after illness following his walk in the storm.
• 1889: Mayor Hugh J. Grant has overhead wire poles cut down in New York.
• 1904, 27 October: New York’s first subway line opens.

Why it matters

The Great Blizzard of 1888 showed how vulnerable a modern, wired city could be to nature. Its lessons pushed New York and other cities to move communications underground, strengthened the case for subways and helped shape the civilian weather service that followed.