Blizzard hits plains states and PNW
I-15 closed for a time because of blowing and drifting snow: Yahoo News Just as a historical mention, I think it was back in 1888 that a blizzard hit the midwest and drop temps something like 70 ...
Forum Discussion
agesilaus wrote:
The storm was in 1888 and nobody was warned?
What should they have done? Social media posts? Urgent messages on every TV station? News alerts on all the radio stations?
Seriously?
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Yes they did have a telegraph system to every train station in the country and could have send out a warning on that. It's been years since I read the book so my recall of the details might not be perfect. But technology existed long before the Internet tho that comes as a shock to younger folks.
I believe one of Thomas Edison's (look him up on Wiki if you never heard of him) early lucrative inventions was a machine that would convert telegraph dots and dashes to words on yellow paper tape.
Alexander Graham Bell incorporated AT&T in 1885 so they had telephones too. People had to talk into them and listen for verbal replies in those days.
Well if you want to talk facts instead of humour, I’m game.
The “Blizzard of ‘88” was NOT in the mid-west, it was in the north-east.
I doubt many children were caught by surprise on their way home from school, the storm hit first in the NYC area on the evening of Sunday March 11, 1888, around midnight the temperature had dropped to freezing and the rain became sleet and then heavy snow. By morning things in New York were atrocious, and things were not much better to the south, in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.
Because of the high winds, ice and snow there were no telegraph lines left in service in the area.
