Blizzards — Winter's Perfect Storm

Downtown at 1:30 p.m. on Park Row as people and horse-drawn vehicles struggle to make their way through the snow of the Blizzard of 1888, as seen from the foot path of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Wallace G. Levison / Time & Life Pictures / Getty

Great '88
1888 was a year for bad blizzards. In January what came to be known as the "Schoolhouse Blizzard" devastated the Great Plains. Arriving on a relatively warm day, the storm caught people unprepared, resulting in upwards of 500 casualties. Two months later, the "The Great Blizzard of '88" struck the Eastern states, shutting down railroads, downing telegraph wires and paralyzing the coastal cities. This storm would become the benchmark against which all others would be judged.

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