In order to top the Eastern Shore deep freeze of 1976/77, you pretty much have have to go back to the winter George Washington and his men spent at Valley Forge. On its website nowadays, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s history of Maryland weather rates 1977/78 the “coldest winter on the East Coast since maybe the founding of the Republic.”
By Christmas Day, 1976, the ice had already started inching out from creeks and rivers and into the Bay. As you can see from the photo up top here, the expanse that ice soon covered reached proportions that seem unfathomable to many of us living on the Eastern Shore today. Some of the scenes in old photos have an almost magical quality of winter wonderland, don’t they?
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I used my dads Gravely tractor to clear the snow off the ice that year, and made a full sized ice rink on the cove at Gibson Island. People came from all over to skate & play hockey - many who just walked across the river. I still remember the icebergs that formed from the icebreakers keeping the shipping channel clear.
ReplyDeleteAnd instead of wanting to drive in it like maniacs this is what families should take the Opportunity to do on a day off.
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