The Big Chill of 1977

FBYC History....

Coast Guard icebreakers cleared channels in the Chesapeake Bay…food and supplies airlifted to Tangier Island…the hardest freeze since the winter of 1917-18. The Chesapeake Bay was glazed over from the C&D Canal to Cape Henry, and Fishing Bay became a bleak artic seascape. It was January, 1977 and, according to the Virginia Climate Advisory website, “was the coldest month ever measured in the Virginia record, with a statewide average temperature of 23.8 degrees F,” and, compared to Virginia’s six coldest winters, “there isn’t a month that even comes close, with January 1918’s 25.0 degrees F the nearest competitor.”
And this bitter cold wave also blasted the entire eastern seaboard. According to the VAEmergency.com website, “the Bicentennial Winter was the coldest seen on the East Coast since before the founding of the republic. In Northern Virginia, the snow began on January 4, just as the Carter Administration was moving into town. The Tidal Potomac (salt water) froze solid enough that people could skate across it near the Memorial Bridge. The prolonged cold wave caused oil and natural gas shortages. Washington did not see heavy snow like the Great Lake region did that winter. The cold winds blowing across the warm lakes brought 68 inches of snow to Buffalo, NY. Washington recorded 10 inches of snow in January, Richmond 11 inches, and Roanoke only 9 inches. The cold wave penetrated into the South and on January 19, snowflakes were seen in Miami, Florida!”
At FBYC, Jackson Creek was frozen solid. This was a time when few, if any, of the club’s cruising fleet spent the winter months on the hard. They were left afloat to survive in the harshest frigid conditions experienced before or since in the history of our club. In spite of members being able to walk (or even skate) on the ice around their boats in their slips, few boats incurred any serious damage. Evidently the slight bobbing of the boats in the water managed to create a small, ice-free perimeter around each vessel.
Thanks to the photo collection of member Bob Graham, we have a visual record of this rare climatic event, and several of his photographs are reproduced here.

But what of the remainder of 1977? A recent article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch addressing the summer heat wave of 2006, cited the summer of 1977 as having the most 90-degree-or-hotter days in a given year in Richmond’s history. Perhaps this was just Mother Nature’s way of balancing out the effects of the extreme cold earlier in January.