THE YEAR THE OCEAN FROZE

President’s weekend, 1979. No school on Friday - snow day – so we headed to the beach. The usual four hour drive took nearly double because - it snowed! There was a lack of salt for the roads in Delaware and they hauled sand off the beaches to put on the roads. In 1979 Ocean City, MD, was truly nearly a ghost town once the summer was over. Hardly anyone around, hardly anything open – and when it snowed, plow blades were either attached to the front of a pickup truck or garbage truck. Heavy snow removal was left to the bulldozers that moved the sand around on the beaches in the summer. It snowed, it rained and Baltimore Avenue had six inches of water under a layer of ice topped with a whole lot of snow! Your average car wasn’t going anywhere. On the beach – there was a lot of snow and the ocean was full of ice – BIG chunks of ice. It looked molten on the waves. There was enough ice in the ocean that it broke apart the fishing pier tearing up the T end of the pier. The T was never replaced on the pier. It was nearly a week before regular cars could travel around town. (Newspaper photos: Eastern Shore Times)

Oceanfront fishing pier-minus the top of the T

Looking out at the ocean covered in snow & ice

Large chunks of ice carried on the wave and into the tidal surf

Looking down the boardwalk towards the pier area

Looking up the beach from 33rd Street

From the back porch towards Holiday Plaza

Same shot just seconds later!!

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