Slip on your long-johns and flannels, your warm boots and favorite gloves, grab your coat and that hat with the funny looking earflaps, and let’s take a wintry walk through a couple centuries of Eastern Shore weather history.

Official records weren’t kept until the late 1800’s, so reliable climate data for our country’s formative years is hard to come by. There were, however, several documented blizzards and deep-freezes during this time that had significant impact on our early Chesapeake Bay ancestors.

January 27-28, 1772. Two to three feet of snow fell in two days. A half century had passed since any of the early settlers recorded a storm of such power, and back in 1717 it was New England that got clobbered. Around here, no colonists had ever seen anything like it. Because the storm was recorded in the journals of two future presidents , it’s known as The Washington-Jefferson…