The northern storm centre, which had passed eastward on the 11th, had had the usual effect of drawing in a large quantity of cold air from British America; a cold wave following the wake of this storm, as is usual during the winter season. This usual effect was intensified by the advance of a second, and more violent, cyclonic centre northward; the effect of which was to augment the cold wave already in progress by drawing in a still larger amount of cold air to re-enforce it.
As has been already alluded to, the quantity of snowfall was unusually great. The easterly and northeasterly winds had drawn a large amount of aqueous vapor from the Atlantic over New England in advance of the low area. The sudden change of temperature precipitated by far the greater portion of the aqueous vapor in the air, with the result of an almost unprecedented fall of snow over western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the valley of the Hudson.
Professor Winslow Upton, Secretary of the New England Meteorological Society, has gathered estimates of snow from 420 different observers, which go to show that 40 inches or more of snow fell over the greater part of the districts named.
The deepening of the area of low pressure and the augmentation of the cold high area advancing from British America resulted in barometric gradients of unusual intensity; there being gradients in excess of 6, when gradients of 5 rarely occur either in the United States or Great Britain. The high winds caused by these unusual gradients had the effect of drifting the snow to an unusual extent, so that, as is well known, nearly every railroad in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts was snow-bound; the earliest and most prolonged effects being experienced in Connecticut, which doubtless received the full benefit of the heavy snowfall in the Hudson River valley in addition to that in the western part of that State.
It is thought by some that the storm re-curved and passed northwest into Connecticut; an opinion in which I cannot concur. The international map and reports tend to show that this storm passed northeastward and was on the Banks of Newfoundland on the 17th of March. The peculiar shape of the isobars, while the storm could be clearly defined from observations at hand, was such that it is not unreasonable to believe that the change of wind to the south at Block Island was due simply to an off-shoot of the storm from the main centre, in like manner as the storm itself was the outgrowth of a previous depression.
The track of this storm across the sea is left to Professor Hayden. These remarks are necessarily imperfect, as my official duties have been such as to prevent any careful study or examination of the storm apart from that possible on the current weather maps of the Signal Service.
THE GREAT STORM OFF THE ATLANTIC COAST OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 11TH–14TH, 1888.
BY EVERETT HAYDEN,
In charge of the division of Marine Meteorology, Hydrographic Office, Navy Dept.
INTRODUCTION.