LOCAL LORE: THE BLIZZARD OF 1888
Think winter in the city is rough? It could be so much worse…
If there’s one thing New Yorkers enjoy tweaking about, it’s snow. We eat adverse commuting conditions for breakfast, but put a little frozen water on the ground and the general population swoons like a Tennessee Williams character. Where are my boots! The cross-country skis! My new wooly hat! I mean, it’s only snow, guys. And this season, we honestly haven’t had all that much of it. At least, not like we did that one time back in 1888, my friends. Now that was a snowstorm to remember. Cue the music.
Nicknamed “The Great White Hurricane,” over 400 New Yorkers died during this freak blizzard which occurred on March 12th of that year. There was an average of five feet of snow dumped on Gotham, with drifts reportedly reaching from fifteen to thirty feet deep downtown. Don’t forget, this was back in the day when a vehicle’s horsepower literally referred to horses. As was the style of the time, the local rags ranted floridly about the general state of chaos on the ground. The venerable New York Sun ran the story the day after as,“BLIZZARD WAS KING. The Metropolis Helpless Under Snow.”
“It was as if New York had been a burning candle upon which nature had clapped a snuffer, leaving nothing of the city’s activity but a struggling ember… At a quarter past 6 o’clock, when the extremely modified sunlight forced its way to earth, the scene in the two great cities that the bridge unites was remarkable beyond any winter sight remembered by the people. The streets were blocked with snowdrifts. The car tracks were hid, horse cars were not in the range of possibilities, a wind of wild velocity howled between the rows of houses, the air was burdened with soft, wet, clinging snow, only here and there was a wagon to be seen, only here and there a feebly moving man…The city’s surface was like a wreck-strewn battle field”.
That sounds hellish, and damned if they didn’t even have Canada Goose jackets at the time. So later on today when someone inevitably says “damn this weather we’re having lately!” be sure to endear yourself to them by professorially educating them in stentorian tones about a real snow storm: the New York Blizzard of 1888.
