The Knickerbocker Theater, from Earth Science Photo of the Day.

Today’s first real winter storm of the season landed this morning, and we’re staring down some serious ice tonight. But we can be pretty sure of one thing: it’s not the worst storm D.C.’s succumbed to on January 27. Today marks the 87th* anniversary of the great Knickerbocker Storm of 1922. The two-day blizzard got its name when D.C.’s Knickerbocker Theater collapsed on the night of the January 28, killing 98 people and injuring 133. It is still the single largest snow storm D.C. has ever had (with an official total of 25 inches and drifts considerably larger than that), and the disaster at the Knickerbocker still ranks among our city’s most tragic.

The storm did a thorough demolition job on the entire eastern seaboard. With temperatures below freezing since January 23, the coast was perfectly positioned for brutal results from any passing storm. The cyclone formed off the coast of Florida, and made its way over land starting in Georgia, moving over Cape Hatteras, and up several east coast cities. Richmond, D.C. and Baltimore were among the hardest hit, where temperatures were in the 20s for the duration of the storm. The Knickerbocker (quite literally) covered 22,400 square miles of northeastern United States. It fell in line with our coast’s tendency for the worst blizzards to come on weekends (since 1909, only two major snowstorms have fallen outside of a weekend on the east coast).