Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1893-03-27
RECORD OF SOME COLD WINTERS.
Though We Have Been Having a Cold
Winter There Have Been Others.

| Though We Have Been Having Cold
Winter There Have Been Others.
| The impression that this is q remark
Sble winter and one of the old fashioned
Lind led Professor John Smock, the state
Eeologist of New Jersey, to make some
seasonable comments on the kind of
weather that our forefathers had when
this country was new. Professor Smock
has written considerable about the
weather and has finished the most COM
plete record of the weather that has been
brought between the covers of a book.
From the facts and figures that he has
at his command the people who became
frightened a few weeks ago when the
mercury dallied around the zero point
were unjustly so, and should be con-
soled with the information that the
folks of this day and generation are not
in it with the good old sires of colonial
and Revolutionary days for cold winters.
Professor Smock's record goes back TO
1907, and it tells how often the Hudson
and the Delaware rivers were frozen
ovet. This record is particularly inter
esting because it tells of frost in June
and rivers full of ice in April. Frost
making its appearance in every month in
the year and snowstorms in May destroy
ing the crops. There are numerous cases
cited where the mercury had gone way
below zero and remained there weeks at
time.
Some extracts are made from the rec
ords, and they tell their own story:
16i1-2- Chesapeake bay nearly frozen over.
El7-Feb. 1924, great snow; greatest ever
known" up to that time in New England and
on Long Island.
INSTRUMENTATION in the Delaware much OBJ
structed by ice from Dec. n until Feb. 2S; Feb.
I, an OK roasted whole on the ice at Phiadel-
phta; March rs, snow fell 2 to 21e feet deep on a
level.
179G-7-Delaware closed Dec. %; Susquohanna
closed Dec. @; Jan. 10, as cold weather as re-
membered in SO years; at south and west ex-
tremely cold.
1797-S-Winter long and cold; Hudson river
closed in November; Delaware frozen over Dec.
l, open again Feb. 8.
179S9-A long and severe winter, with much
snow; March IL, deep snow.
l790-Cold weather in spring; ice April 20;
frost June 9.
1799 1904 remarkably open winter until
Jan. @; Delaware open again on 18th; snow
feet deep in Georgia; snow and hail at st.
Mary's river in Florida.
1SU3-May z, ice; on the Sth, a snow which
broke down the poplars and other trees in leaf
1928 9-Hudson river closed Dec. %; free from
ice April
1S29-30-Hudson river at Albany closed Jan.
II Qs3O), and free from ice again March 15.
1S30-1-Winter very cold at southwest; ice
formed at New Orleans.
1S35-January and February both very cold;
Feb. 8, thermometer fell below zero nearly all
over the country north of Savannah and
Natchez; Long Island sound was closed by ice;
coolest winter since l779-S0.
March was the coolest month of the winter
of 1872 Q; snow Is inches deep in Georgia. Au-
gust, remarkably heavy rainfall in Newark,
N. j., 22.S4 inches; at Lambertville, 1926 inches
Hudson river free from ice at Albany April 49,
having closed Nov. 20, 1872
Winter of 1872 cold; mean temperatures of
the months, to degrees below the average;
the East river was crossed on the ice Jan. 80,
and for three days following Susquehanna at
Havre de Grace frozen over for seven weeks;
cold and SHOWS as far south as New Orleans
and Jacksonville.
Trenton Gazette.