The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman
Authors: William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman
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Eastern states
increasingly viewed the landscape less as a threat than a source of beauty and natural
wonder. Alarmed at the ravages wrought by the “savage hand of cultivation,” they worried
that their slashing and burning of the wilderness despoiled God’s handiwork and disrupted
the natural harmony between heaven and earth, and that violent and erratic weather
patterns comprised their punishment.
Certainly, chauvinistic New Englanders who prided themselves on their hardiness had
no desire to escape the bracing rigor of their winters. Months of subfreezing temperatures
accompanied by occasional blizzards built the rugged New England character, they believed,
inculcating the virtues of prudence, foresight, diligence, and cooperation in farmers
from Connecticut to Maine. “Of all the scenes which this climate offers,” wrote St.
John de Crevecoeur in an essay on the American farmer, “none has struck me with a
greater degree of admiration than the ushering in of our winters … a rigour which,
when once descended, becomes one of the principal favors and blessings this climate
has to boast of.” Without such a challenge, New Englanders feared losing their unique
identity and growing as weak and soft as they perceived the European character.
Popular anxiety about a general warming trend faded, however, as the nation entered
the second decade of the nineteenth century, the coldest ten-year period on record
in the history of North America. Even before the eruption of Mount Tambora, aerosol
veils from a series of volcanic eruptions were cooling temperatures around the world.
In 1809, a very powerful volcano erupted at an unidentified location—probably somewhere
in the tropics, based on the recent discovery of large amounts of volcanic sulfuric
acid in ice cores in the Arctic. Three years later, Soufrière (“Sulfur Mine”) on Saint
Vincent erupted over a six-week period, followed by Awu on Sangihe Island, slightly
northeast of Tambora. In February 1814, the eruption of Mount Mayon in the Philippines
killed over 2,000 people on the island of Luzon. Some of each of these aerosol clouds,
particularly the latter two, would have lingered in the stratosphere in 1815. (The
lifetimes of stratospheric clouds vary from eruption to eruption, but three- to five-year
spans are common, with a decreasing fraction of the original cloud remaining each
year.) The devastating global cooling from Tambora, an eruption more powerful than
the three earlier ones put together, was likely amplified by the existing cooling
trend from these previous eruptions.
In the United States, 1812 brought significantly cooler temperatures and greater precipitation
than usual; at Middlebury College in Vermont, Professor Frederick Hall noted that
“crops were destroyed by the coldness and wetness of the season,” and observers in
New England reported frosts in late August and snow in September. The following two
years were only slightly colder than normal, but the growing season of 1815 in New
England was cut short by May snows and early September killing frosts. In eastern
Canada, the province of Quebec suffered devastating losses to its harvests in 1815.
The relatively mild North American winter of 1815–16, therefore, generated few complaints.
Then April arrived. After a mild start, the weather took a decidedly nasty turn in
the middle of the month. On April 12, nearly a foot of snow fell on Quebec City, and
it continued to snow for the next five days. “The country has all the appearance of
the middle of winter,” noted a news report on April 18, “the depth of snow being still
between 3 and 4 feet. We understand that in many parishes the cattle are already suffering
from a scarcity of forage.” The same storm hit Albany, New York, a day later, leaving
the roofs of houses and the nearby hills completely covered with snow. To the west
of the city, “the
increasingly viewed the landscape less as a threat than a source of beauty and natural
wonder. Alarmed at the ravages wrought by the “savage hand of cultivation,” they worried
that their slashing and burning of the wilderness despoiled God’s handiwork and disrupted
the natural harmony between heaven and earth, and that violent and erratic weather
patterns comprised their punishment.
Certainly, chauvinistic New Englanders who prided themselves on their hardiness had
no desire to escape the bracing rigor of their winters. Months of subfreezing temperatures
accompanied by occasional blizzards built the rugged New England character, they believed,
inculcating the virtues of prudence, foresight, diligence, and cooperation in farmers
from Connecticut to Maine. “Of all the scenes which this climate offers,” wrote St.
John de Crevecoeur in an essay on the American farmer, “none has struck me with a
greater degree of admiration than the ushering in of our winters … a rigour which,
when once descended, becomes one of the principal favors and blessings this climate
has to boast of.” Without such a challenge, New Englanders feared losing their unique
identity and growing as weak and soft as they perceived the European character.
Popular anxiety about a general warming trend faded, however, as the nation entered
the second decade of the nineteenth century, the coldest ten-year period on record
in the history of North America. Even before the eruption of Mount Tambora, aerosol
veils from a series of volcanic eruptions were cooling temperatures around the world.
In 1809, a very powerful volcano erupted at an unidentified location—probably somewhere
in the tropics, based on the recent discovery of large amounts of volcanic sulfuric
acid in ice cores in the Arctic. Three years later, Soufrière (“Sulfur Mine”) on Saint
Vincent erupted over a six-week period, followed by Awu on Sangihe Island, slightly
northeast of Tambora. In February 1814, the eruption of Mount Mayon in the Philippines
killed over 2,000 people on the island of Luzon. Some of each of these aerosol clouds,
particularly the latter two, would have lingered in the stratosphere in 1815. (The
lifetimes of stratospheric clouds vary from eruption to eruption, but three- to five-year
spans are common, with a decreasing fraction of the original cloud remaining each
year.) The devastating global cooling from Tambora, an eruption more powerful than
the three earlier ones put together, was likely amplified by the existing cooling
trend from these previous eruptions.
In the United States, 1812 brought significantly cooler temperatures and greater precipitation
than usual; at Middlebury College in Vermont, Professor Frederick Hall noted that
“crops were destroyed by the coldness and wetness of the season,” and observers in
New England reported frosts in late August and snow in September. The following two
years were only slightly colder than normal, but the growing season of 1815 in New
England was cut short by May snows and early September killing frosts. In eastern
Canada, the province of Quebec suffered devastating losses to its harvests in 1815.
The relatively mild North American winter of 1815–16, therefore, generated few complaints.
Then April arrived. After a mild start, the weather took a decidedly nasty turn in
the middle of the month. On April 12, nearly a foot of snow fell on Quebec City, and
it continued to snow for the next five days. “The country has all the appearance of
the middle of winter,” noted a news report on April 18, “the depth of snow being still
between 3 and 4 feet. We understand that in many parishes the cattle are already suffering
from a scarcity of forage.” The same storm hit Albany, New York, a day later, leaving
the roofs of houses and the nearby hills completely covered with snow. To the west
of the city, “the
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