The weather was unseasonably mild just before the blizzard, with heavy rains that turned to snow as temperatures dropped rapidly. The storm began in earnest shortly after midnight on March 12 and continued unabated for a full day and a half. In a 2007 article, the National Weather Service estimated that this Nor'easter dumped as much as of snow in parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, while parts of New Jersey and New York had up to. Most of northern Vermont received from to. Drifts averaged, over the tops of houses from New York to New England, with reports of drifts covering three-story houses. The highest drift was recorded in Gravesend, Brooklyn at. of snow fell in Saratoga Springs, New York; in Albany, New York; in New Haven, Connecticut; and in New York City. The storm also produced severe winds; wind gusts were reported, although the highest official report in New York City was, with a gust reported at Block Island. New York's Central Park Observatory reported a minimum temperature of, and a daytime average of on March 13, the coldest ever for March.
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. Similarly, telegraph infrastructure was disabled, isolating Montreal and most of the large northeastern U.S. cities from Washington, D.C. to Boston for days. Following the storm, New York began placing its telegraph and telephone infrastructure underground to prevent their destruction. Fire stations were immobilized, and property loss from fire alone was estimated at $25 million. The blizzard resulted in the founding of the Christman Bird and Wildlife Sanctuary located near Delanson, New York. From Chesapeake Bay through the New England area, more than 200 ships were either grounded or wrecked, resulting in the deaths of at least 100 seamen. More than 400 people died from the storm and the ensuing cold, including 200 in New York City alone. Efforts were made to push the snow into the Atlantic Ocean. Severe flooding occurred after the storm due to melting snow, especially in the Brooklyn area, which was susceptible to flooding because of its topography. Not all areas were notably affected by the Blizzard of 1888; an article in the Cambridge Press published five days after the storm noted that the "fall of snow in this vicinity was comparatively small, and had it not been accompanied by a strong wind it would have been regarded as rather trifling in amount, the total depth, on a level, not exceeding ten inches". Roscoe Conkling, an influential Republican politician, died as a result of the storm.
