The Great White Hurricane Was A New Jersey March Mega Snowstorm
February is dwindling down with each passing day, but if you think that takes huge snowstorms off the table around here, then you haven't met an angry old man named March.
The photos of this huge storm are not easy to come by, and the ones shown are of New York, but you get the point.
If you really want to hear about an unbelievable snowstorm that paralyzed us here in the Garden State, and a good part of the northern part of the country for that matter, then you want to hear about the Great Blizzard of 1888, better known as the Great White Hurricane.
And when you find out when it happened in 1888, it may send a bit of a shudder up your spine.
When a storm is nicknamed the Great White Hurricane, you know it had to be some serious stuff, and that would be the understatement of this century, the last one, and the 19th century as well.
After all, when the name is Great Blizzard, and you need another nickname to drive home the point, you know it was a doozy.
The entire area from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine was blanketed in anywhere from 10 to 58 inches of snow. That's almost 5 feet of snow.
And there were reports of 50-foot snowdrifts. That's not a typo. Some wind drifts were 4 stories high, and remember this is 1888 we're talking about here. Snowplows were still being pulled by horses.
And here's the scary part. Do you know when this mega-storm happened? Do you know what month the Great White Hurricane struck? Try March. That's right, March 12-14 1888.
Wait, you mean to tell me we can't wait to get out of February so we can stop worrying about big snowstorms, and one of the biggest in history happened in March?
Unfortunately, that's exactly right.
There were other big March snowstorms in our area, like the "Storm of the Century Blizzard" in 1993, and the Blizzard of 2017, both in March.
So don't put away the shovels and the scrapers. You never know. And we don't want to jinx it, either.