Cold? Sort Of...

I dug this photo out of the archives. That's me in January, 1977 standing on Buzzards Bay. I am certain this picture was taken at Old Silver Beach. This is very much a salt water bay and on the horizon would be Marion or Mattapoisett, MA.

I suspect it would have taken a prolonged period of very cold temperatures to freeze the bay. Something that has not, to my knowledge, occurred since. I am sure archived meteorological data could be found to see just how the weather was back then. I do recall people walking out on this ice for quite a distance. Not for the faint of heart and certainly something I would not recommend.

*** EDIT 01/16/08 1715 ***
While researching Buzzards Bay in 1977 I came across the following taken from the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program website regarding oil spills in the bay:

In contrast to the 1974 accident, the 1977 Bouchard 65 spill was well reported because it occurred 1 month after the Argo Merchant disaster off Nantucket, and because upper Buzzards Bay was locked with sea ice. The spill is memorable because some of the oil trapped on the ice was ignited on fire and newspapers carried dramatic photos of plumes of black smoke rising over Buzzards Bay toward cape Cod. Equally amazing, clean crews walked onto Buzzards Bay off of Wings Point with 5000 foot long hoses to vacuum off pools of oil on the ice. Apparently, the first estimate of the spill was 500,000 gallons, but this was revised by the third day to 100,000 gallons as reported in Standard Times. Eleven days after the spill, the final volume of oil was provided in newspaper accounts as "about 80,000 gallons," which coincides with the 1,932 barrels (81,140 gallons) reported in subsequent government reports about the attempted oil burning. Only around 2,000 gallons were presumed to be burned.