Scholastic Booktalk

No one expected it, and many didn’t survive it, but no one has forgotten it.

On Saturday, March 10, 1888, New York City basked in the spring sunshine. Sidewalks, streets, and parks were full of people strolling, riding, playing and picnicking. It had been one of the warmest springs on record. President Grover Cleveland and his wife decided to take the weekend off, and left Washington DC for their country home.

But thousands of miles away, two great storms were advancing toward New York City. Weather forecasting in 1888 was a new science, and not yet reliable. That Saturday, the staff of the US Army Signal Corps decided there was no real danger from either of the storms. At 10:00 p.m., the forecast for the following day said: “Fresh to brisk winds with rain will prevail, followed on Monday by colder brisk winds and fair weather throughout the Atlantic states...”

On Sunday evening temperatures in New York City dropped 20 degrees in only an hour, and the rain turned to sleet and ice. Snow began falling about midnight. Winds were clocked at 75-85 miles an hour, and the temperature continued to plummet to below zero. By Monday morning, New York City was buried in snow and battered by hurricane-force winds. Trains were unable to break through the snowdrifts, and elevated trains shut down because of ice and high winds. Fifteen thousand commuters were marooned in mid-air in unheated cars. Horse-drawn streetcars couldn’t keep going, even with four or six horses. By noon, the city was at a virtual standstill, and snow was drifting up to the second stories of buildings.

And the snow wasn’t the only danger. The forest of telegraph, telephone and electrical poles, carrying hundreds of wires each, were at the mercy of the weather, falling over, or snapping in two. The streets were littered with thousands of poles and miles of dangerous wires, many buried as the snow continued to fall. In just over 24 hours, the Blizzard of ’88 brought the entire northeastern region of the United States to a standstill, cut off from the rest of the world in a white, frozen wilderness.

Read the eyewitness accounts of those who lived through the terrifying ordeal. Feel the sleet sting your face, hear the howl of the wind as it tries to knock you off your feel, and listen to the voices of the people caught in a white nightmare some of them would not survive, and none of those who did survive would ever forget.

This Booktalk was written by librarian and booktalking expert Joni R. Bodart

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