The fortieth anniversary of the Blizzard of 1978 has stirred up a lot of memories. I remember it well. My wife and I were stranded in New York City and a plea from the mayor on TV led to my volunteering to work for a night at Bellevue Hospital. I remember people skiing down Fifth Avenue.
It was quite a storm, but still not up to what struck the region in 1888.
Actually, there were two blizzards in 1888. The first hit the Midwest in January, where in 24 hours the temperature fell from 74 above zero to 28 below. Winds of hurricane strength whipped the fine snow across the plains with a howling roar so loud that shouts could not be heard six feet away. The snow was so fine - "ice-dust" it was called - that several people died of suffocation without being frozen. More than 200 lost their lives as the snow piled up in 50-foot drifts. That was what Midwesterners call the Blizzard of 1888.
A separate storm ravaged the Eastern states from March 11 to March 14, 1888. It paralyzed the East Coast from Virginia to Maine. Hundreds of miles of telephone and telegraph wires were downed. Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington were incommunicado for days. Two hundred ships were grounded, and at least 100 seamen are said to have perished in the howling gales and driving snow. A total of more than 400 deaths was reported. The National Weather service estimated the snowfall at 50 inches or more. The winds created drifts as high as 20 feet and more, topping entire houses. That is what we Easterners called the Great Blizzard of 1888.
Worcester was not spared. The Telegram ran a whole column of headlines, as was then the custom:
WE CAN'T GET OUT
NEITHER FRIEND NOR FOE CAN GET IN
MOUNTAINS OF SNOW BAR THE LOCOMOTIVES
PARALYZED ELECTRIC WIRES REFUSE TO CLICK
NO MAILS DELIVERED FOR HOURS
As had happened before, the "Deep Cut" of the Boston & Albany Railroad under Plantation Street became clogged with 30 feet of drifted, packed snow. The locomotive snow plows could not break through. The train from Boston was stuck solid. Hours went by while the freezing, hungry passengers huddled under coats and whatever else they could find. Finally, in desperation, five of the passengers struggled on foot to the downtown police station to get help for the wailing children and shivering women. It eventually took 200 men armed with shovels to carve a path through the snow and link Worcester and Boston again by rail.
For days the papers carried storm stories. George W. Cheney of Shrewsbury, trying to struggle home through the drifts and howling gales, was found dead a quarter mile from his home. The arc lights along Worcester's Main Street blinked out, leaving downtown in "impenetrable darkness." Telegraph and telephone lines to Boston had already been knocked out. The City Hall clock succumbed to the driving snow. The horse cars stopped running along Main and Pleasant Streets. The livery hacks were out of commission because the horses could not maneuver through the drifts.
One Telegram story said that the snow "sifted all about one, in an overwhelming, stifling cloud. Umbrellas turned, hats blew off, snow soaked into clothing. The snow blew from above, from beneath, from all points of horizon. The wind shifted every moment, and blew the snow into irregular, enormous drifts."
People could not walk the few blocks home from work, and the hotels were jammed. School was canceled. Even two days later, according to the Telegram, "The city is still in a state of blockade."
"The little paper boys," reported the sympathetic Telegram, "had a hard time of it. ... The streets in the very center were utterly impassable for man or beast until this forenoon, when a force of 50 men and several four-horse teams broke out roads. The snow before it settled was three feet deep."
Since then, the Blizzards of 1888 have moved into legend, both in the Midwest and the East. There have been other big storms, in 1898, 1920, 1940, 1978 and 1993. But nothing to date has ever quite equaled the impact of 1888 on the American memory.
Albert B. Southwick's columns appear regularly in the Telegram & Gazette.