Downed wires and lamp post in Greenwich Village after the Blizzard of 1888 in New York City.
(New York Historical Society Museum and Library)
A blizzard can still shut down a city or region. But imagine a storm’s impact if it happened before the basic weather forecast infrastructure (satellites, computer forecast models) we take for granted today was in place.
On March 11, 1888, 138 years ago today, such a storm began its four-day siege on the Northeast U.S. That isn’t unusual, even by March standards.
But the ferocity of the crawling coastal storm produced a prolific combination of snow and high winds. A broad swath of Long Island, the Hudson Valley and New England picked up 20 to 50 inches of snow. Winds whipped drifts over 50 feet tall, over the tops of some homes.
New York City’s Central Park picked up 21 inches of snow, in an age that predated snowplows, a subway system and burying wires underground. Travel ground to a halt for days. Four hundred people died either during the storm or in its frigid aftermath, including 200 in New York City. According to NOAA, there were numerous instances of people stranded in the storm, as many were forced to report to work during a struggling economy.
The Blizzard of 1888 remained the record heaviest snowstorm in New York City for 59 years, until it was topped by a December 1947 storm. It still is among the top five recorded snowstorms in New York City, one of only four March snowstorms to produce a foot or more of snow a the park in over 150 years of records.
Weather historian Christopher Burt called it “America’s Greatest Snow Disaster.” You can read a full summary of the blizzard here.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
