The sudden freeze on the East coast was not a unique phenomon. I was living in Boston when the Blizzard of 1978 hit. More here. The Northeast also suffered one in 1993 - the Storm of the Century.
There is an interesting set of photographs at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum:
One Century Ago: What Cold Really Looks Like
Local headlines recently proclaimed that the Hampton Roads area is experiencing perhaps the coldest new year it has experienced in a century. Thousands of "nonessential" workers at military bases across the Hampton Roads Region are off for the second day in a row (myself included, although I'm still on deadline for this blog post and other projects). Many of them are busily documenting the snowdrifts and other winter wonders deposited by the recent "bomb cyclone" that made it all possible. But what did the winter of a century ago look like to the Sailors and other photographers who were working then?
The Hampton Roads Naval Museum recently acquired photographs taken by a young gunner's mate floating on the York River that show just how cold it got one century ago. Compared to the arctic blast of January 1918, which froze battleships into place off Yorktown and made the majority of the Chesapeake region practically impassible, the so-called "bomb cyclone" that swept through the area this week was a mere inconvenience.
Thanks to a young Sailor named Ernest A. Washburn, who was serving aboard USS Rhode Island (BB 17), we now have a better idea what the York looked like during that epic cold snap.
There are five photos at the site - two taken by Mr. Washburn and three taken by other photographers of the same weather event.
Two photographs taken from USS Rhode Island (BB 17) have been combined to show the monitor Tallahassee (BM 9),
which served during the war as a submarine tender, and the battleship Texas (BB 35), frozen in
at the location near Yorktown, Virginia, known as "Base 2" in January 1918.
E.A. Washburn Collection, Hampton Roads Naval Museum
Longtime Norfolk photographer Harry C. Mann recorded the aftermath of the Monticello Hotel fire, after which a
fire engine remained frozen in place. At far left, merchants can be seen removing whatever
wares they can salvage. (Library of Virginia Digital Collections)
Those people who claim that us puny humans are changing the earth's climate are nuts. Pure and simple nuts - they have a political agenda that they are driving and they are using this pseudoscience to leverage their agenda because it will not stand on its own merits.
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