Giant iceberg, frozen fish: A look back at the cold snap on the NC coast 80 years ago
Ice flows piled up in Bogue Sound near Atlantic Beach. Birds at Lake Mattamuskeet got stranded in the ice and had to be fed by the superintendent. The temperature had started to rebound after bottoming out at 16 degrees a couple days before.
“The Harkers Island ferry had to break through ice to continue its run.” That was the scene on the North Carolina coast on Jan. 30, 1940, according to the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Then the iceberg was spotted. A worker with the Works Progress Administration in Salter Path, on the coast near Emerald Isle, “reported that the iceberg was the size of a small island, extending six feet above the surface of the ocean, and on a westerly trajectory.”
“Local resident Rufus Sewell, who had previously made several trips to the Arctic, stated that if the visible ice was six feet above the water, approximately 50 feet of ice was beneath the water,” according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.
A fisherman in Beaufort pulled fish frozen in the sound from the water. “He got the surprise of his life when he returned from fetching a knife to find that they had thawed and were still alive,” the department said.
Big icebergs may have been a common sight in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Hatteras 15,000 years ago, according to UNC-TV, but they were anything but in 1940.
