Charles F.

Daniels
History 1301
Mrs. Donna Edmondson
Draft II. Due 4-06-10
Summer of 1816
While driving with my daughter one afternoon, she played a CD with a song
called "1816, The Year Without a Summer" by a group called Rasputina. 1 The lyrics
about a summer when it snowed caught my attention and the tune was interesting.
Later in the day I happened to be surfing the internet and I Googled "the year
without a summer". Imagine my surprise at the amount of information that
confirmed that the events in the song actually occurred. I started digging deeper
into the causes of this strange weather phenomenon to determine if it was true and
discovered some strange facts. Why had I never heard of this in History class? It
was a significant event in world history that someone had failed to inform me about.
The next question to answer was, what exactly could have happened to cause a
change in weather so severe? I will try to answer these questions in the following
paragraphs.
Winter in the Northern European countries during 1816 was surprisingly
brutal, crop failures and famine devastated the population . There were several
outbreaks such as Typhus ravaging these countries at the same time. 2 The extreme
conditions were the first indications of severe weather changes across the world.
The classic novel "Frankenstein" was written by Mary Shelley while vacationing in

Rasputina's Official Website, n.d., http://www.rasputina.com/

Keith C. Heidorn, PhD, THE WEATHER DOCTOR, July 1, 2000, revised April 7,
2004,http://www.dandantheweatherman.com/Bereklauw/yearnosummer.html

Switzerland, the weather had become cold and storms caused everyone to stay
inside and Mary, lacking anything better to do, was inspired to begin writing. 3
The precursor to all of the weather changes were the result of significant
volcanic events across the globe. In 1812, there were at least fourteen Volcanic
eruptions around the world, five of which were noteworthy (with a Volcanic
Explosive Index (VEI) of 3 or greater)- Mt Augustine in Alaska, Mt. Atka in the
Aleutian Islands, La Soufriere in St Vincent (islands of the Lesser Antilles), Mt Etna in
Italy, and Mt Tambora on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia. Mt. Tambora was the largest
explosion in recorded history with a VEI of 7.4
Mt Tambora had started showing volcanic activity in 1812. In April of 1815 Mt.
Tambora erupted explosively, it expelled an estimated 100 cubic kilometers of
material into the atmosphere. Mt Tambora erupted vertically and debris reached as
far as the stratosphere (20 to 50 km high) where the jet stream picked up the ash
and gases and distributed them around the globe. Mt Tambora lost over 4,000 feet
off the top of the mountain and left a crater roughly 5 miles across. The volcanic
material would take some time to circle the world so there would have been a time
lag between when the eruption occurred and when the climatic effects would be
felt. This time lag coupled with several previous eruptions from other volcanoes
resulted in worldwide temperatures reducing 3 to 5 degrees in 1816. Thousands of
tons of material carried by the jet stream would cause a reflection of solar energy
back out to space and this caused severe changes in weather patterns. The effects
were mostly felt in the Northern Hemisphere; Europe, North America, and Asia. In
3

Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, 1996 - 2010 Mary Shelley and Frankenstein Customized
by Kim Woodbridge, http://www.marywshelley.com/essays/the-summer-of-1816/
4

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Global Volcanism

Program,http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm

the immediate vicinity of Mt. Tambora at least 12,000 people were killed almost
instantly by the eruption with only about 26 survivors. Estimated deaths worldwide
from Tsunamis or starvation due to Tambora's eruption impacting weather is around
118,000
Another possible contributor to worldwide weather changes was a period of
low solar activity, commonly referred to as a Dalton Minimum. This is a cycle of
reduced sunspots or solar activity which can result in less radiational heating
reaching the earth. This coupled with the volcanic debris reflecting heat back into
space reduced the overall temperature of the planet by as much as 3 or 4 degrees. 5
All of these events occurring thousands of miles away and unknown to the
colonists in would change their lives dramatically. The colonies in the Northeastern
part of the country were surviving at that time mostly on what they could produce
locally. Farmers that planted their crops in the spring of 1816 under normal
conditions would produce enough food to survive through to the next year and
possibly sell or trade the surplus to other colonists. The summer of 1816 turned out
to be anything but normal and would set into motion the early migration west of the
colonists. Strange things started to occur in June when it turned cold and then
started to snow, storms and bad weather destroyed the first crops. Farmers saved
what they could by bringing some of the plants inside to protect them. Temperature
fluctuations of as much as 27 degrees Celsius occurred over a few hours. The
weather warmed up and the farmers planted again only to have a series of cold
snaps kill off the crops again. There were reports in several colonies of
unseasonable freezing of ponds, birds falling prey to the cold and snowfall as far
5

Keith C. Heidorn, PhD, THE WEATHER DOCTOR, July 1, 2000, revised April 7,
2004,http://www.dandantheweatherman.com/Bereklauw/yearnosummer.html

south as New Jersey in the middle of summer. Livestock was affected by the
extreme cold and in some cases brought into homes to protect them. The failed
crops severely impacted the colonists ability to survive and this was the primary
motivation for moving to better locations. Weather in Northern New England was
the worst and as a result virtually entire towns picked up and left to search for a
better life where the climate was more stable. The trek west may have been
delayed much longer if the bad weather had not motivated people to find better
living conditions.
News of global importance did not travel quickly, boats were slow and
communications between countries was an arduous process. It could take months or
years for information to reach around the world and even then science was not
advanced enough to explain what had occurred or how it had affected the entire
world. The colonies in the Northeastern United States were unaware of the reasons
for bad weather, their only solution was to move somewhere warmer. There were
some that believed Benjamin Franklin was to blame because of his experiments with
electricity and others were convinced that it was conjured up by the Freemasons. 6
Entire families and communities decided that it was better to risk the unknown
wilderness and all its dangers rather than suffer the unpredictable weather
extremes. The decision to move to unexplored country and face unknown
challenges must not have been taken lightly. The colonists must have been
convinced that this was the only way to survive.
Considering the present confusion on the truths or fallacies of Global
warming, this was a very important example of how the weather can be affected by
6

Lee-Lee Schlegel, THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER 1816, IN MAINE

http://www.milbridgehistoricalsociety.org/previous/no_summer.html

natural occurrences. The current age of instant worldwide information and

technological advances has made it easier to predict life threatening events and
activate early warning systems to protect the population from disaster. The
Indonesian Tsunami of 2004 proved that even with all of our science and technology
we can still be caught off-guard by natural events.