by R W Owen

Created on: May 17, 2009   Last Updated: July 17, 2009

In its wake, the Great White Hurricane left as much as 50 inches of snow in Connecticut and Massachusetts, forty in New York and New Jersey. The New York World reported particularly horrific conditions in New York City, which was buried under almost two feet of snow and suffered temperatures as low as five degrees above zero with biting 50 mph winds. The storm that suspended travel and communications in the Northeast for nearly a week in March 1888 most notably paralyzed New York City; however, the storm also suspended life in smaller Northeast U.S. cities.

As Monday, March 12, 1888 dawned over Lowell, Massachusetts, its 65,000 residents awoke to a wet swirling snow and temperatures near freezing. Dutifully, they trudged off to their jobs in the city's textile mills, not aware of the incoming blizzard, which would drop increasing intensities of snow in the city throughout that day and the next. The light breezes of the morning developed into furious winds, as temperatures never warmed past freezing. As the day progressed, milkmen struggled to make their rounds, shoveling passageways through drifts that began reaching several feet in many neighborhoods. Patrolmen were forced to give up their rounds later in the day, saying that they had never before had such an experience. Most considered such a storm only possible in the U.S. West, which was still haunted by the fresh memory of the hundreds of deaths caused by the Schoolhouse Blizzard earlier that year.

In Lowell, Massachusetts, snow, heavy and wet, fell throughout the day on March 12, accompanied by howling winds that rattled the windows, and even the buildings in which people were confined. Communication with other cities facing the same storm was soon lost as the snow, ice, and strong gusts prostrated the telegraph poles and telephone wires. One injury was reported in Lowell, when a swinging sign tore from its fastenings and hit a man shoveling his employer's sidewalk.

Getting To Lowell

That night, people returning to Lowell from surrounding cities and towns by train got in late, if at all. The local papers recorded several accounts of trains stalling along the way, stranding passengers in a dark, white wilderness. The snow had settled solidly on the tracks, slowing the steam engines as they pushed through drifts that, by most accounts, reached 10-20 feet high. The snow had taken down many of the telegraph wires, as well, leaving communication with these stalled trains impossible.

Getting

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