The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman Page A

country in many places had the appearance of winter; the hills being
     as white as in the month of January.” Further west, the storm surprised settlers in
     the town of Chillicothe, then the capital of Ohio. On April 18, one correspondent
     reported “a temperature extraordinary at this season of the year. In the latter part
     of last week, the weather was excessively cold—on Sunday, snow fell to the depth of
     several inches; and since that time the weather has been clear, but nearly as cold
     as it was in February.”
    But the advent of a heat wave at the end of the month raised farmers’ spirits; by
     the time the sunspots appeared in late April, Vermont farmers—who already had planted
     some of their crops—were sweltering under highs in the low 80s.
    *   *   *
    C OOLER temperatures also settled across the European continent in 1810, ushering in a decade
     that would be the coldest in several centuries for much of western and central Europe.
     From 1810–1815, the difference was felt mainly during the autumns and winters; the
     summers were not unusually frigid. In 1812, central Italy experienced snow and a highly
     atypical hard freeze in April, followed by a very cold autumn; harvests in Germany,
     Switzerland, and the Netherlands also suffered from the cold. After relatively normal
     weather in 1813, exceptionally low temperatures returned in 1814—the coldest year
     on record for much of central Europe. Conditions did not improve significantly in
     1815: Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Austria (especially in the southern provinces
     of Styria and Carinthia) all endured heavy precipitation and a colder than usual autumn,
     resulting in poor harvests which sent the price of wheat sharply higher. Weather during
     the winter of 1815–16 was unsettled across much of Europe; in Germany, strong winds
     and a lack of snow cover blew wheat seeds off the soil, forcing farmers to replant
     their fields.
    In Britain, 1810 marked the start of the coldest decade in Great Britain since the
     1690s, with average temperatures one to two degrees Celcius colder than normal, frigid
     enough to provoke a change in women’s fashions. During the 1790s, English women had
     adopted revealing styles of undergarments from France; as temperatures dropped, however,
     they covered up their cleavage with the more modest and far warmer shifts known as
     “bosom friends” to help fend off the chilling winds.
    Despite the cooler weather, British farmers enjoyed a very good harvest in the autumn
     of 1815. The following winter began colder than usual in Britain, with highs in the
     upper 30s and low 40s in January and February. March brought spells of warmer weather,
     but significantly more precipitation; it snowed or rained for nearly half the days,
     and one storm dropped a foot of snow on Lancashire. Sleet and snow returned on April
     9, along with subfreezing temperatures that kept several inches of snow on the ground
     in southern England. Four days later, heavy snow along the east coast prevented travelers
     from leaving Dover for the continent; more snow fell on April 14. By the last week
     in April, highs were back in the mid 60s, and farmers could finally plant their crops,
     but the growing season already had been delayed. In Ireland, too, the spring was abnormally
     late.
    Scotland fared worse. In Aberdeenshire, frost and snow from mid-November through mid-March
     froze the turnips used for cattle fodder, and the plants rotted in the alternating
     frosts and snow. “We never experienced a worse winter for feeding,” complained the Aberdeen Journal . Farmers began taking their cattle to market much earlier than usual, driving down
     the price of beef. The remainder of March in eastern Scotland was “stormy in the extreme;
     in consequence of which … very little ploughing was got done.” April was cold and
     dry. Virtually nothing was growing by the beginning of May: “Even on the coast, there
     is yet no