The Great Storm of March 11-U, 1888. 39 



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 augmenta- 

 tion of the cold high area advancing from British America 

 resulted in barometric gradients of unusual intensity; there be 

 ing 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 drift- 

 ing 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 pro- 

 longed 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 Nowfoundland 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 Hay- 

 den. These remarks are necessarily imperfect, as my ofiicial 

 duties have been such as to prevent any careful study or examina- 

 tion of the storm apart from that possible on the current weather 

 maps of the Signal Service. 



