Great Blizzard of 1888
The Great Blizzard of 1888 or Great Blizzard of '88 (March 11 – March 14, 1888) was one of the most severe recorded blizzards in the history of the United States of America. Snowfalls of 20–60 inches fell in parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and sustained winds of more than 45 miles per hour produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 feet. Railroads were shut down and people were confined to their houses for up to a week.
The storm, referred to as the Great White Hurricane, paralyzed the East Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine,as well as the Atlantic provinces of Canada.Telegraph infrastructure was disabled, isolating Montreal and most of the large northeastern U.S. cities from Washington, D.C. to Boston for days. Following the storm, New York began placing its telegraph and telephone infrastructure underground to prevent their destruction. From Chesapeake Bay through the New England area, more than 200 ships were either grounded or wrecked, resulting in the deaths of at least 100 seamen.
In New York, neither rail nor road transport was possible anywhere for days, and drifts across the New York–New Haven rail line at Westport, Connecticut took eight days to clear; transportation gridlock as a result of the storm was partially responsible for the creation of the first underground subway system in the United States, which opened nine years later in Boston.
