Mid-Atlantic

In 1980, a record-breaking thunderstorm unleashed a disastrous amount of water on the tiny town of Brady’s Bend.

In a mere forty minutes, the community was annihilated by a catastrophic flash flood. Residents ran for their lives, and nine people drowned. Although rescue and recovery soon followed, the harrowing experience left a mark on the survivors that remains decades later.

Author and Brady’s Bend native Lisa Olszak Zumstein tells this community’s story in full and reveals how this devastating storm mirrors numerous others in the Appalachian corridor.

The Blizzard of 1977 is still remembered in Western New York, especially in Buffalo, which received the brunt of the storm. The blizzard occurred during the most extreme cold the area had ever seen, accompanied by some of the largest winter snowfalls on record. The blizzard struck with little warning on Friday morning, January 28, 1977, and the blowing snow and extreme cold paralyzed the Buffalo area until the first week of February. The storm made travel impossible and stranded thousands of people across the region, while snowdrifts buried houses up to the second story. This is a story not only of survival, but also of community. Neighbors helped neighbors, radio stations relayed messages and provided crucial information, and countless individuals donated their time and equipment to bring needed medicine or food to shut-ins across the region.

The blizzard occurred during the most extreme cold the area had ever seen, accompanied by some of the largest winter snowfalls on record. The blizzard struck with little warning on Friday morning, January 28, 1977, and the blowing snow and extreme cold paralyzed the Buffalo area until the first week of February. The storm made travel impossible and stranded thousands of people across the region, while snowdrifts buried houses up to the second story. This is a story not only of survival, but also of community. Neighbors helped neighbors, radio stations relayed messages and provided crucial information, and countless individuals donated their time and equipment to bring needed medicine or food to shut-ins across the region

On March 25, 1911, flames rapidly consumed everything within the Triangle Waist Company factory, killing 146 workers. Until September 11, 2001, the Triangle fire was the deadliest workplace disaster in New York City history.

The victims, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, died needlessly due to unsafe working conditions, such as locked or blocked doors, narrow stairways, faulty fire escapes, and a lack of sprinklers. Mass grief and outrage spread from New York's Lower East Side across the country. Garment union membership swelled, and New York politics shifted dramatically toward reform, paving the way for the New Deal and, ultimately, the workplace standards expected today. Through historic images, The New York City Triangle Factory Fire honors the victims' sacrifice and serves as a reminder of the ongoing struggle for the dignity of all working people.

Sailing on the Chesapeake Bay's myriad inlets in summer, it is hard to imagine that come January icebreakers might be plowing the waters you cruised in July.

When portions of the Great Shellfish Bay are iced up the flow of commerce is impeded. At the turn of the 19th century, with the center of the new nation's government established in its arms, a frozen Bay meant that the United States' emergence to a status on par with the foremost nations of the world might be painfully slow. Throughout the 20th century years of extreme cold continued to halt navigation and fishing.

James Foster chronicles the disasters, large and small, which come with the coldest of winters.

Discover lost history in the dark waters of Lake George.

Lake George is bustling with boaters, swimmers, fishermen and many others, enjoying its scenic, quintessentially Adirondack shores. But the depths below hide a whole other world--one of shipwrecks and lost history. Entombed are remnants of Lake George's important naval heritage, such as the legendary Land Tortoise radeau, which sank in 1758. Other wrecks include the steam yacht Ellide and the first famed Minne-Ha-Ha. These waters hold secrets, too, like the explanation behind the 1926 disappearance of two hunters. After years of exploration across the lake's bottomlands, underwater archaeologist Joseph W. Zarzynski and archeological diver Bob Benway present the most intriguing discoveries among more than two hundred known shipwreck sites.

Central New York, a region renowned as one of the snowiest in the world, has a long and stormy relationship with its winters.

From the Lake Ontario port in Oswego to the busy streets of Syracuse and Utica, every community in the region has found themselves buried from brutal snowstorms.  

Author Jim Fafaglia draws from personal memories, family diaries and newspaper accounts to craft a two-hundred year history of Central New York's  whiteouts, blizzards and snowstorms.

Discover the thrilling, mysterious history of the shipwrecks found beneath the waves of Rehoboth Beach.

Under the hot summer sun, vacationers stroll the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, chewing saltwater taffy and listening to the gulls' raucous cackle. Few realize that under the sparkling water rests a graveyard. Horrific nor'easters, treacherous shoals and simple human error caused the demise of countless ships, giving birth to legends of treasure and terror. There is De Braak, rumored to hold millions of dollars in gold; the Mohawk, which burned like a torch in the Delaware Bay; and the vessels that fell victim to the Great White Hurricane, which froze dead men to the mast. Journey with local author Pam George as she deftly picks her way through the history of Delaware's most intriguing and mysterious shipwrecks.

Join author David Healey as he keeps an eye to the red horizon and chronicles the most remarkable storms to churn the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

Even before John Smith's crew weathered its first squall, the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries had been ravaged by every type of storm imaginable. A 1769 hurricane altered the course of history, demolishing the shipping channels of Charlestown and making Baltimore the dominant port. A once-in-five-hundred-years storm, Tropical Storm Agnes, left more than seventy people dead and devastated the ecology of the bay. Before the blizzards of 2009 and 2010, the snowfall record was held by the combination of the Great Eastern Blizzard of 1899, which blew the water out of the bay, and the Great White Hurricane, which stranded the oyster fleet of Baltimore in feet of ice.

Fires were a scourge in nineteenth-century New York, destroying personal property, prominent buildings and, in many cases, a sense of community. In Madison County, fires changed the community, included the mysterious burning of the Madison County Courthouse, the complete loss of business districts in both Canastota and Hamilton and the arsonist who terrorized Cazenovia for nearly five years. Fires destroyed the historic Gerrit Smith Mansion in Peterboro, the Munnsville Plow Company and Duffy-Mott in Bouckville, drastically affecting the future of the county. Madison County historian Matthew Urtz examines the fires, their causes and the economic and psychological impact they had on this peaceful community.

Journey to the coast with Michael Morgan as he looks back at the area's most deadly storms.

Coastal Delaware, Maryland and Virginia have always been vulnerable to the power of storms. In the early nineteenth century, storm-driven shipwrecks led to the construction of the Delaware breakwater. In 1933, a storm created an inlet on the south edge of Ocean City and changed the character of the Maryland resort. The Ash Wednesday nor'easter of 1962 devastated oceanfront communities, led to the creation of beach replenishment projects that pushed the ocean back from the new multimillion-dollar buildings that sat on the sand and spurred the creation of Assateague Island National Seashore. Michael Morgan narrates the stories of these storms and reminds us of the power of wind and water.