Lewes author’s “Bold Forecast” weaves tale of Hurricane Agnes

Lewes author Gary Letcher recently announced publication of “Bold Forecast: The Hurricane Agnes Deluge.”

Severe weather expert Dr. Greg Forbes contributed a foreword.

June 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Hurricane Agnes, a storm that brought the most rain and wreaked the worst damage in U.S. history up to its time. In the Mid-Atlantic states, Agnes remains the storm against which all others will forever be compared. “Bold Forecast” tells the Agnes story as a compelling narrative, reminding readers of the power of nature, and the power of ordinary people in the face of epic catastrophe.

Agnes raged up the coast from Florida through Virginia, Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania, bringing almost every river and stream to record flood levels. Dozens of people were killed, thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed, and damages ran into many millions. Yet Agnes saved its strongest blows for the Susquehanna River basin. Fed by an unseen deluge in the river’s remote headwaters, the worst of the Agnes floods caught forecasters and riverside communities by surprise in a 400-mile rampage from the Finger Lakes of upstate New York to the Chesapeake Bay. More than 100 people died in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

“Bold Forecast” unfolds like a novel. Tales of courage, loss and survival are woven together with the stories of scientists who struggled to predict the path of disaster even as their equipment washed away around them. Founded on meticulous research, “Bold Forecast” is the first beginning-to-end telling of this timeless saga of man vs. nature.

Agnes was raging the day of the Watergate break-in. Throughout, “Bold Forecast” is set against a backdrop of current events, politics and popular culture.

Letcher practiced environmental law in the Washington, D.C. area for many years. He now lives in Lewes where he teaches geology and genealogy at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. His other books include “Waterfalls of the Mid-Atlantic States” and “A Paddler’s Guide to the Delaware River.”