Year Without a Summer

Recently I was talking with a genealogical colleague about doing a talk about natural phenomena and their effects on families and communities. He brought up the subject of the Year Without a Summer and its impact on his ancestors who had migrated to North America.

I do mention the event in some of my talks. I covered it in my book, Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests. But I have not paid a lot more attention to it in terms of how it affected various localities.

Maybe because of the more recent date of the event, at least in terms of human history, there is a great deal of information in books, articles, scientific studies and newspapers. Much of this material was produced by and for local consumption and thus has value in looking at people and communities where our ancestors lived and worked. The Year Without a Summer, of course, has to deal with the impact the 1816 Tambora eruption had on weather and climate around the world.

I commented about the event in my book:

What was to affect the entire globe, though, was a cloud of ash and gases rising into the stratosphere containing deadly sulphur dioxide which, when combined with water produced sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) – 100 million tons of it! Jet streams began blowing the cloud to the west. Within two weeks it had surrounded the world at the equator; by July it had spread north and south to reach the poles. The Earth was blanketed by a shadowy, poisonous veil of gas. With cold air trapped beneath the volcanic plumes, clouds could not form, thus rain could not fall to wash the pollution away. It took many years for the sulphur particles to finally drop back to the Earth.

In the meantime, the shroud caused havoc with climatic conditions: sunlight was reflected back into space; temperatures at the surface were cooled, and weather patterns were completely disrupted. The year following the Tambora eruption has been called the “Year Without Summer” because in most parts of the world in 1815, conditions were wet, cold and just plain miserable!

There is evidence in many records illustrating the effects on local communities. Eastern Canada and northeast USA experienced highly unusual weather and winter-like conditions in the spring of 1816 that were widely reported in newspapers and diaries. Later studies and reports offered data and comments about the effects of the ash cloud.

Can you find any references to this event in newspapers or other records in the areas where your ancestors lived?

New York Evening Post, Thursday, June 27, 1816 (Newspapers.com): various reports from NE United States

The Franklin Repository, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 25 June 1816 (Newspapers.com)

Montreal Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 10 June 1816 (Ancestry.com)

You can read more about the event and its repercussions in many books and articles, and on several websites. For Canadian experiences, read:

Canada’s History: 1816: The Year Without Summer https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/environment/1816-the-year-without-summer

Canada’s History: The Big Chill https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/environment/the-big-chill

Canadian History Ehx: Canada’s Year Without a Summer https://canadaehx.com/2020/07/11/canadas-year-without-a-summer/

Reader’s Digest: The Year Canada Didn’t Have a Summer https://www.readersdigest.ca/culture/1816-the-year-without-a-summer/

 

For Northeastern American experiences, read:

Discover Concord: Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death: The Year Without a Summer https://www.discoverconcordma.com/articles/291-eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death-the-year-without-a-summer

Historic Ipswich: 1816, the Year Without Summer https://historicipswich.net/2020/06/25/1816-the-year-without-summer/

NASA: The year without a summer https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/183/the-year-without-a-summer/

US National Parks Service: 1816 – The Year Without Summer https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/1816-the-year-without-summer.htm

USGS: New England’s 1816 “Mackerel Year,” Volcanoes and Climate Change Today https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/new-englands-1816-mackerel-year-volcanoes-and-climate-change-today

The Beehive – Massachusetts Historical Society: 1816: the Year Without a Summer https://www.masshist.org/beehiveblog/2016/11/1815-the-year-without-a-summer/

 

For European experiences and explanations, read:

Andrew P Schurer et al. (2019). Disentangling the causes of the 1816 European year without a summer. Environmental Research Letters. 14(9).  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3a10

 

For general data:

Klingaman, W. K. & Klingaman, N. P. (2013). The Year Without Summer. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 352 pp.

Do an Internet search for “year without a summer” for many more references to the eruption and its effects around the world in articles, books, blogs, newspapers, journals, etc.