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.