Great Storms of the Chesapeake

by Arcadia Publishing

Overview

Join author David Healey as he keeps an eye to the red horizon and chronicles the most remarkable storms to churn the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

Even before John Smith's crew weathered its first squall, the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries had been ravaged by every type of storm imaginable. A 1769 hurricane altered the course of history, demolishing the shipping channels of Charlestown and making Baltimore the dominant port. A once-in-five-hundred-years storm, Tropical Storm Agnes, left more than seventy people dead and devastated the ecology of the bay. Before the blizzards of 2009 and 2010, the snowfall record was held by the combination of the Great Eastern Blizzard of 1899, which blew the water out of the bay, and the Great White Hurricane, which stranded the oyster fleet of Baltimore in feet of ice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609494049
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	09/18/2012
Series:	Disaster
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	1,063,124
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

David Healey's work has appeared in Maryland Life, Delmarva Quarterly, Chesapeake Bay, American History, The Washington Times and Blue & Gray. He is an active member of the local history community and lectures on local history topics frequently. Meteorologist Bernadette Woods graduated from Penn State University with a B.S. degree in meteorology and later studied at L'Universite des Sciences Humaines in Strasbourg, France. In 2004, she earned the Television Seal of Approval through the American Meteorological Society. Bernadette was also awarded an Emmy Award for Best Weathercaster in 2006.

Table of Contents

Foreword Bernadette Woods 7

Preface 9

Part I The 1600s and 1700s

New World Tempests: Witches, Hurry-Canes and Legendary Storms 15

George Washington's Storm: The Great Chesapeake Bay Hurricane of 1788 25

Baltimore versus Charlestown: The Hurricane that Sealed a Town's Fate 28

Part II The 1800s

Fire and Nature's Fury during the War of 1812 35

The Great Ice Bridge of 1852 43

Flash Flood on the Patapsco 50

Tempting Fate: The Great Gale of 1878 and the Sinking of Express 54

Keepers of the Light and Sentinels in the Storm 65

Snowbound: The Great Blizzards of 1888 and 1899 74

How Curious: Hail, Lightning and the Heyday of the Maryland Weather Service 82

Part III The 1900s and Beyond

The Once-in-Five-Hundred-Years Storm: Tropical Storm Agnes 91

To Hell and Back Again with Hurricane Hazel 100

The Day the Marvel Went Down 104

City on the Sand: The Legacy of Storms in Ocean City 111

In the Deep Midwinter: Snow, Ice and Tragedy on the Chesapeake 118

Isabel Surges into Chesapeake 125

Goodnight, Irene 130

The Great Derecho of 2012 134

A Perilous Past, a Stormy Future 136

Weather Signs and Record Weather Extremes 143

Notes on the Sources 147

Index 155

About the Author 159

Editorial Reviews

Author David Healey keeps an eye to the red horizon and chronicles the most remarkable storms to churn the waters of the Chesapeake Bay in his new book "Great Storms of the Chesapeake" newly released by The History Press. —Maryland News Zap

From the Publisher