This week’s East Coast blizzard dumped up to three feet of snow across New England. In my part of Connecticut we got off relatively lightly with only a foot of snow falling overnight.  As anyone without a snow blower will tell you, that is still quite a large amount of snow to shovel from a driveway.

This paltry amount of snow pales next to the twenty-one inches that fell onto New York City in 1888. With wind gusts of up to seventy-five miles an hour, the snow whipped into thirty-foot high drifts that paralyzed the city. Over two hundred New Yorkers died during the three-day storm. New England was even harder hit, with up to sixty inches of snow and fifty-foot-high drifts.

The blizzard of 1888 led directly to the establishment of a corps of snow removers in New York City.  The snow was shoveled by hand into horse drawn carts and emptied into the rivers. Electrical wires were moved underground, and the decision was made to build a subway versus a network of surface transit trains.

Despite these improvements, in many ways we are as much at the mercy of the weather as those nineteenth-century New Yorkers. Nevertheless, there is something about a natural disaster that draws people together in a positive way.  Whether it is bringing groceries to an elderly neighbor, or helping to dig snow from around fire hydrants to assist local firemen, we can all play a part.

May your preparations for winter’s wrath go well. Stay warm, and take the time to check in with friends and family. Even if it’s only to complain how inaccurate weather forecasts can be. Or even worse, how this time the meteorologists got their predictions spot on and you are facing three feet of winter wonderland on your doorstep.

And now, back to the shoveling . . .