The Great Blizzard of 1888

Some famous celebrities at time, such as Mark Twain, the famous writer, and P. T. Barnum, the circus entertainer, were stranded in the New York at the height of storm. P. T. Barnum continued to put on a show for the stranded at Madison Square Garden.

The storm continued without letting down for 36 hours. After it was all over, the entire eastern coast from Virginia to Maine was paralayzed.

The Aftermath of The Storm

The storm caused 25 million dollars in damage. Most of the damage was cause by fires that could not be put out because fire equipments were useless during the storm. Communications between New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D. C. were completed knock out for two days due to snapped telegraph and telephone wires.Today many of the gas lines and communication lines in New York and other cities are underground from the communication crisis cause by the blizzard. The shipping industry took a big hit when two-hundred ships were put out of service and 100 hundred sailors were lost at sea. A total of about four-hundred deaths were reported after the storm.

Many residents were without food for several days after the storm because In those days people only brought food for one day. People were also without heat for several days since it was impossible to make coal deliveries because the road was impassable. It would take several days to clear those roads.

The storm dumped up 50 inches of snow in most places with wind drifts up to 20 feet high going up to the second floor of some buildings in New York. The deep snow left all trains snow bounded and it took several days before they were moving again. This transportation crisis after the storm started the planning and building of the New York Subway System we know today.

The storm also cause damage all along the East coast. Many ships were sunk in docks and many residents in other places faced the same problems as the residents of New York did.

In closing, there have been many blizzards since the “The Great Blizzard of 1888.” But none of these have top it in intensity and duration. Below is a list of notable blizzards since this one.

•  Other Notable Blizzards since 1888

Armistice Day Storm (November 11-12, 1940), The Great Midwest Blizzard (January 26-27, 1967), Blizzard of 1978 (January 25-27, 1978), Superstorm of 1993—also dubbed the “Storm of the Century” (March 12-13, 1993); Blizzard of 1996 (Jan. 7, 1996).