- As the story goes, finalizing the state line between
Vermont and its neighbor to the west ended up with one old farmer suddenly
living in New York, though he hadn't moved in nigh on fifty years. Asked
how he felt about it, he said that it suited him just fine. "Couldn't
take 'nother one o' them Vermont winters," said he.
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- Stories about the weather abound. But no fiction is stranger
than the truth about the summer of 1816, the year Mother Nature forgot
summer entirely.
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- Spring started off fine after a severe winter, dry and
warm by the end of April, with flowers bursting into color, trees blooming,
and the earthy smells of the new season in the air.
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- May, however, was annoyingly cold and dryer than normal.
Many blamed it on huge sunspots, visible to the naked eye for the first
time in memory.
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- It was 90 degrees on June fifth. By the following day,
the temperature dropped to 40, and the snow that was falling melted as
it touched the still very warm ground.
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- It was snowing again on the seventh, and continued until
noon the next day at Waterbury. By that time there was a foot of white
on the ground in Montpelier, over eighteen inches in Cabot. Many crops
and leaves on trees were killed. Farmers wearily replanted. Birds which
had not taken shelter perished and newly shorn sheep froze to death.
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- The ninth found inch-thick ice on shallow ponds and foot-long
icicles were noted. A good early crop of oats kept many from going hungry;
it was the first time most had even tasted oatmeal. Seed prices were by
now up to five times the norm, but farmers were thankful even at that.
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- "Some account was given . . . of the unparalleled
severity of the weather. It continued, without any essential amelioration,
from the 6th to the 10th instant -- freezing as hard five nights in succession
as it usually does in December. On the night of the 6th, water froze an
inch thick -- and on the night of the 7th and morning of the 8th, a kind
of sleet or exceeding cold snow fell, attended with high wind, which measured
in places where it was drifted, 18 to 20 inches in depth. Saturday morning
the weather was more severe than it generally is during the storms of winter."
-- North Star, Danville, Vermont
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- June 15, 1816
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- July was not much better. Some parts of New England got
rain, but Vermont remained dry as a bone. A frost on August 21 killed more
beans, potatoes and corn, and the mountains were snow-covered. Farmers
burned their hay, sacrificing it to save the corn. By September, frost
had killed corn well south into Massachusetts.
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- By September, most of Vermont had been a full three months
without rain. Fires which swept through parched forest land filled the
air with acrid smoke and a general darkness. Another killing frost struck
the final blow on the tenth, wiping out whatever had managed to survive
to that point. A meager crop of unripe potatoes was harvested. Better than
nothing.
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- The following winter, cattle starved for lack of hay.
There was much human suffering but little starvation as the more fortunate
shared what they had. Importing food was difficult with little money available
with which to buy it. A full day of converting trees into salts and potash
would yield about 30 cents.
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- Fish had became a staple diet, with people in the east
operating large nets day and night on the rivers and trading fish for maple
syrup. Boiled wild foods and porcupines also sustained many.
-
- 1816 having been the worst of a string of bad years,
many thought the weather had turned permanently, and moved west. Richford
was nearly a ghost town, the remaining few barely surviving; Waterford
had so few residents that no Town Meetings were held for several years.
Unable to sell their land, many just up and left it. New immigration eventually
brought in people who had no memory of the hard times.
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- Mount Tambora, a volcano in the Dutch East Indies, had
erupted the year before. The resulting cloud of dust, ash and cinders in
the upper atmosphere is said to have been the cause of the drastically
lowered temperatures and the summer of "Eighteen Hundred and Froze
to Death". _____
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- 1816 - Year Without Summer
-
- By T. Neil Davis http://dogbert.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF0/098.html
-
- This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical
Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF
research community. T. Neil Davis is a seismologist at the institute.
-
-
- Famous in the annals of weather is the year 1816, during
which the temperature dipped to freezing every month in Madison County,
New York. It was a bitter year for farmers in both America and Europe as
their crops froze, were replanted and froze again. On the Fourth of July,
men of Plymouth, Connecticut wore heavy overcoats as they played quoits
in the bright sunshine. Snow fell in Montreal on June 6 and 8 and Quebec
City had a 12-inch accumulation on June 10.
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- In fact, 1816 was just the worst of a series of cold
years from 1812 to 1817, years that were cold worldwide. The accepted explanation
is that several major volcanic eruptions in those years loaded the atmosphere
with dust which girdled the globe. The dust does a better job of keeping
the sun's radiation out than keeping the Earth's in and so causes the average
temperature to lower by a degree or so. Local effects can be much more
severe, as unfortunate farmers have found out.
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- Extensive volcanic dust perhaps has played a major role
in past climatic changes; it may again have profound effect, even so great
as to cause a new ice age. _____
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- Mary Shelley Writes Frankenstein During Summer
Of 1816
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- link
- Michelle Bedoya Stan Walker
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-
- In the author's introduction to Frankenstein, Shelley
brought up a question which at one time was frequently asked of her. "How..
a young girl came to think of and dilate upon so very hideous an idea?
Perhaps this whole novel and its storyline can be credited to the summer
of 1816 which she spent in the Swiss village of Cologny at the Villa Diodati
overlooking majestic lake Geneve. Shelley was acompanied by her step sister
Claire Clairmont, her husband Percey Shelley, Lord Byron, and his physician
John Polidori. During their stay the weather changed from beautiful to
"melodramatically tempestuous." As a matter of fact it was the
weather that kept the Shelleys there just long enough for the idea of Frankenstein
to be born. They were forced to stay longer than planned because of the
terrible rainstorms. To keep themselves entertained on the night of June
16th, the group joined to read a collection of German ghost stories which
prompted Lord Byron to challenge his guests to a contest of writing skills.
Most everyone wrote atleast minor tidbits, except Mary, who was uninspired.
Shelley remained so until the night of June 21st when the group discussed
a topic from "deStaeis De l'Allemagne: 'whether the principle of life
could be discovered and whether scientists could galvanize a corpse of
manufactured humanoid." That night Mary Shelley woke from a horrible
nightmare to realize the topic of her story. The very next day she began
writing chapter IV of her novel. By May of 1817 she had finished her story
and it was published by January 1, 1818.
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