Source: THE HISTORY OF CLINTON AND FRANKLIN COUNTIES, NY 1880

Page: 157

Item: THE COLD SEASON OF 1816

"There was great distress throughout the county of Clinton during the winter of 1816-17. Mr. Peter SAILLY, in a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, under date of Jan. 24, 1817, says, "A large portion of the inhabitants are much distressed for want of bread, whilst the poorer and laboring class are absolutely destitute of means of obtaining it at the high price it sells for." The column of the REPUBLICAN bear evidence to the severity of the season. The summer was unusually cold and backward. On Thursday, the 6th day of June, the atmosphere at Plattsburgh was filled with particles of snow, and it was uncomfortable out of doors without a great-coat. In Vermont, the weather was still more severe. On Thursday "the snow fell rapidly, but melted as it fell. Much snow fell on Friday night, and on Saturday in the forenoon in many places. In Williston it was twenty, and in Cabot eighteen, inches deep. The ground at Montpelier was generally covered during the whole of yesterday (June 8th), and the mountains, as far as can be seen, are yet completely white." [Letter published in REPUBLICAN of July 13th, dated Waterbury, Vt, June 9th.] This cold weather was succeeded by an uncommon drought. No rain fell during the months of August and September. The earth became parched, and, in clay soils, opened in large cracks; swamps were dried up, wells and brooks failed to furnish water, and the rivers became so low that the mills could not grind sufficient to answer the wants of the inhabitants. Wheat was brought to the mills of Messrs. SMITH and PLATT, in this village, to be ground, by farmers residing as far north as Lacadie, in Canada. Fires also raged throughout the county, burning up large quantities of timber, and frequently destroying pastures and meadow lands. No rain of an consequence fell until after the 10th of October. "The atmosphere," say the REPUBLICAN of October 5th, "has been so filled with smoke, arising from the fires in every direction, that even in this village, for three or four days the first of the present week, it would be difficult in the morning to distinguish a man at the distance of fifty rods.""

P.S. History attributes the above to the eruption of a volcano in Indonesia.

Historical evidence supports the premise that volcanic eruptions cool the earth. Between 1812 and 1817 there were three major volcanic eruptions. Soufrier on St. Vincent Island erupted in 1812; Mayon in the Philippines in 1812; Tambora in Sumbawa Indonesia in April 1815. Tambora was by far the largest and preceded the disastrous famines of 1816-1817. These abnormal cool temperatures of 1816-1817 were accompanied by wetter than normal weather in many areas.

Debris from Mt. Tambora (8°S latitude, 118°E longitude) took one year to spread globally. The following year is known as the year without a summer. While extensive meteorological observations did not exist at this time, people's diaries and weather journals documented the cold weather of the summer of 1816. In New England snow fell in June and frost occurred in July and August. Late frost killed a large number of crops; however, the entire summer was not below freezing. Indeed, on June 5, the day before the snowfall, the temperatures in Vermont were in the low 30's°C (upper 80's°F)! After the early June cold spell in New England, farmers, hoping for a good crop, replanted their crops as temperatures returned to normal. Another cold spell hit in early July bringing freezing temperatures to the area. Harvests were bad that year and resulted in severe food shortages in parts of New England. The poor harvest had an economic impact throughout the United States. The price of a bushel of corn in Philadelphia in May 1817 was double the price it was in April 1816.

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