Icy Winters on the Chesapeake Bay: A History (Disaster)

Icy Winters on the Chesapeake Bay: A History (Disaster)

Sailing on the Chesapeake Bay's myriad inlets in summer, it is hard to imagine that come January icebreakers might be plowing the waters you cruised in July. When portions of the Great Shellfish Bay are iced up the flow of commerce is impeded. At the turn of the 19th century, with the center of the new nation's government established in its arms, a frozen Bay meant that the United States' emergence to a status on par with the foremost nations of the world might be painfully slow. Throughout the 20th century years of extreme cold continued to halt navigation and fishing. James Foster chronicles the disasters, large and small, which come with the coldest of winters. James Foster is a lifelong resident of the Chesapeake Bay region. He first became interested in icy winters on the Chesapeake Bay while working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in the 1970s. He had the opportunity to study satellite images of the Bay during the intensely cold winter of 1976-77 and has written several scientific articles that deal with ice and snow in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. This is his first book on the Chesapeake Bay.