The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-03-06
The Very Shapes Gold Snap - The

Season.
Yesterday, the 9Th of March, 1872, will
long be remembered among the people of this
city and throughout our Northern States as
the day of one Of the most vigorously cold
snaps they ever experienced, and in this city
particularly from the freezing to death of
poor milkman in his wagon. At six in the
morning at the HERALD Office, in the open
air, the thermometer marked six degrees
above zero. At the upper end of the island
and in the immediate country round about
the mercury was down to zero; at Pough-
keepsie it was three degrees below, at Troy
fourteen below, at Ogdensburg. on the st.
Lawrence, thirty-two degrees below, and at
Watertown two degrees lower still, or thirty
four below zero, which is about the average
at Upernavik, in Greenland, for the month
of December. We have no recollection of q
colder report from the highest point on the
Pacific Railroad in the Rocky Mountains at
any time this winter-twenty degrees below
zero being most frequently the report from
Sherman, Cheyenne and others of the most
elevated points along said road during its late
protracted snow blockades
This Greenland cold snap which came upon
us on Monday night, and which was developed
into the general cold Of yesterday, over all the
North, from the Mississippi to the seaboard,
was visitation from the immense snow fields
of the Rocky Mountains and the intervening
one thousand miles Of snow-covered prairies
and frozen rivers and lakes. Hence these
cold snaps in March are nothing extraordinary.
Last March, for instance, was the coolest, in
fact the only cold month of last winter, the
month which secured US a fair ice crop, after we
had given up the season as failure. March
is the month of the vernal equinoctials, when
the sun, coming back to us again, crosses the
Equator and begins to make his daily circuit
on our side of the line; and not till we get a
few days beyond the 2lst of March can we
count with any certainty in New York upon the
closing Of the winter. On the Pacific coast they
have the spring upon them now, because the
prevailing winds Of North America are from
the West, and they bring to our Pacific coast
the soft warm air from the great equatorial
current of the Pacific Ocean, while to us they
bring the freezing atmosphere from the snow
covered Rocky Mountains. To be sure it is
not often that milkman is frozen in
his wagon while on his morning round
in this city in the month of March; but still it
will be remembered that few years ago, near
the middle of March, some of our fremen were
nearly frozen to death on that terribly cold
night of the burning of Broadway museum.
No doubt some of our Photographic establish
ments have their pictures yet of the strange
appearance of the shell of the building, thickly
encased in ice and icicles from the freezing Of
the water poured upon it by the engines. In
view of our summer peaches and cream, q
freezing March is good thing, for it prevents
the blooming of the trees too early, and gives
them so much security against the dangers Of
nipping frost; while your fruit trees
In blooming TOO soon may be caught by Jack Frost,
And then cherries and peaches and plums viii be
lost,