On this day, March 11, 1888, the Great Blizzard of 1888 began.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Great Blizzard of 1888



Surface analysis of Blizzard on March 12, 1888 at 10 p.m.

Type: Extratropical cyclone, Blizzard
Lowest pressure: 980 hPa (29 inHg)
Maximum snowfall or ice accretion: 58 inches (147 cm)
Fatalities: 400 fatalities
Damage: $25 million in 1888 (equivalent to $750 million in 2023)
Areas affected: Eastern United States, Eastern Canada

The Great Blizzard of 1888, also known as the Great Blizzard of '88 or the Great White Hurricane (March 11–14, 1888), was one of the most severe recorded blizzards in American history. The storm paralyzed the East Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine, as well as the Atlantic provinces of Canada. Snow fell from 10 to 58 inches (25 to 147 cm) in parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and sustained winds of more than 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 feet (15 m). Railroads were shut down and people were confined to their homes for up to a week. Railway and telegraph lines were disabled, and this provided the impetus to move these pieces of infrastructure underground. Emergency services were also affected during this blizzard.

Storm details



Streets in New York City as the storm hit. Many overhead wires broke and presented a hazard to city dwellers.



Brooklyn Bridge during the blizzard

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Impacts

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. The New York Stock Exchange was closed for two days. A full two day closure would not occur again until Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

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Sat Mar 11, 2023: On this day, March 11, 1888, the Great Blizzard of 1888 began.

About the wires in the photograph:

Fri Nov 8, 2019: 47 Years Ago Today; HBO is launched, starting in Wilkes-Barre

HBO

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History

Development and launch

In 1965, Charles Dolan—who had already done pioneering work in the commercial use of cables and had developed Teleguide, a closed-circuit tourist information television system distributed to hotels in the New York metropolitan area—won a franchise to build a cable television system in the Lower Manhattan section of New York City. The new system, which Dolan named "Sterling Information Services" (later to be known as Sterling Manhattan Cable, and eventually becoming the then Time Warner Cable which merged into Charter Communications in 2016), became the first urban underground cable television system in the United States.

Rather than stringing cable on telephone poles or using microwave antennas to receive the signals, Sterling laid cable beneath the streets. This was partly because the tall buildings in the city blocked television signals, and partly because the New York City Council had required that all electrical and telecommunication wiring be laid underground to limit service disruptions during bad weather—an ordinance that was passed after a blizzard in 1888 damaged telephone and telegraph lines in the area. In 1973, Time-Life, Inc. purchased a 20% stake in Dolan's company.

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[Scrivener7]

1. Meanwhile, now NY hasn't gotten any snow to speak of in three years. I guess we can string those

wires on poles again.

[-misanthroptimist]

2. I grew up in Albany NY in the 1960s

Some of my older relatives still talked about it then. I suspect they heard it from their parents and passed it on. It had a big impact.