Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.milbridgehistoricalsociety.org/previous/no_summer.html
THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER
1816, IN MAINE
By Lee-Lee Schlegel
MONTHS THAT SHOULD BE SUMMER?S PRIME
SLEET AND SNOW AND FROST AND RIME
AIR SO COLD YOU SEE YOUR BREATH
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FROZE TO DEATH
(An old rhyme)
--------------------------------------------------------------
1771 REUBEN WHITTEN 1847
SON OF A REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER,
A PIONEER OF THIS TOWN, COLD SEASON OF
1816 RAISED 40 BUSHELS OF WHEAT ON THIS
LAND WHITCH KEPT HIS FAMILY AND
NEIGHBOURS FROM STARVATION
( Tombstone in an Ashland, N.H. cemetery)
Imagine! It?s June. Or July. Or perhaps August in Down East Maine. In Milbridge. That?s easy enough to do, isn?t it? We?ve all experienced enough summers around here to know what typical summers are like.
But imagine, if you will, June and July and August with a foot of snow covering the ground, and the temperature, day after day, well below freezing.
That?s what it was like in Milbridge in 1816. Not only in Milbridge but also in most of New England and much of Western Europe. The summer of 1816 was the coldest ever experienced by any person then living, according to the old Portland Eastern Argus newspaper. It was also known as the Year Without a Summer. In fact, the wording ??eighteen hundred and froze to death? is a genuine colloquial expression commonly found in historical literature about the summer of 1816. In that year, frost was reported in every month.
Over the millions of years that our earth has existed, there have been several periods called Little Ice Ages. During the most recent one, our planet experienced a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850, but during those 290 years there was only one recorded ?summer that wasn?t?, that of 1816.
What happened that year in Maine to take away the summer? Well, actually nothing unusual. But something cataclysmic did happen half a year?s travel away from New England, in 1815. On April 10 th - to be exact. It was a Wednesday, James Madison?s last year as President and five years before Maine became a state, that Mount Tambora, a volcano east of Java in the Dutch East Indies, in today?s Indonesia, erupted. It produced the loudest sound any human being had ever heard; it was the most powerful explosion in the past 10,000 years. The 1815 eruption, heard 1,000 miles away, left an indelible mark on the world, with great human and environmental costs. It is a story of cause and effect that underscores the devastating power of nature and the delicate balance between climate and life.
Mount Tambora erupted continually from April 10 th to July 15 th, 1815, sending 400 million tons, and 400 cubic miles, of sulfurous gases and ash into the atmosphere. It took a year for the winds to blow the debris across the world and for Maine to feel the affects of the veil of dust blocking out the sun.
A diary kept by an unknown person near Fryeburg, Maine, described the 1816 weather as follows...
THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER
1816, IN MAINE
By Lee-Lee Schlegel
MONTHS THAT SHOULD BE SUMMER?S PRIME
SLEET AND SNOW AND FROST AND RIME
AIR SO COLD YOU SEE YOUR BREATH
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FROZE TO DEATH
(An old rhyme)
--------------------------------------------------------------
1771 REUBEN WHITTEN 1847
SON OF A REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER,
A PIONEER OF THIS TOWN, COLD SEASON OF
1816 RAISED 40 BUSHELS OF WHEAT ON THIS
LAND WHITCH KEPT HIS FAMILY AND
NEIGHBOURS FROM STARVATION
( Tombstone in an Ashland, N.H. cemetery)
Imagine! It?s June. Or July. Or perhaps August in Down East Maine. In Milbridge. That?s easy enough to do, isn?t it? We?ve all experienced enough summers around here to know what typical summers are like.
But imagine, if you will, June and July and August with a foot of snow covering the ground, and the temperature, day after day, well below freezing.
That?s what it was like in Milbridge in 1816. Not only in Milbridge but also in most of New England and much of Western Europe. The summer of 1816 was the coldest ever experienced by any person then living, according to the old Portland Eastern Argus newspaper. It was also known as the Year Without a Summer. In fact, the wording ??eighteen hundred and froze to death? is a genuine colloquial expression commonly found in historical literature about the summer of 1816. In that year, frost was reported in every month.
Over the millions of years that our earth has existed, there have been several periods called Little Ice Ages. During the most recent one, our planet experienced a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850, but during those 290 years there was only one recorded ?summer that wasn?t?, that of 1816.
What happened that year in Maine to take away the summer? Well, actually nothing unusual. But something cataclysmic did happen half a year?s travel away from New England, in 1815. On April 10 th - to be exact. It was a Wednesday, James Madison?s last year as President and five years before Maine became a state, that Mount Tambora, a volcano east of Java in the Dutch East Indies, in today?s Indonesia, erupted. It produced the loudest sound any human being had ever heard; it was the most powerful explosion in the past 10,000 years. The 1815 eruption, heard 1,000 miles away, left an indelible mark on the world, with great human and environmental costs. It is a story of cause and effect that underscores the devastating power of nature and the delicate balance between climate and life.
Mount Tambora erupted continually from April 10 th to July 15 th, 1815, sending 400 million tons, and 400 cubic miles, of sulfurous gases and ash into the atmosphere. It took a year for the winds to blow the debris across the world and for Maine to feel the affects of the veil of dust blocking out the sun.
A diary kept by an unknown person near Fryeburg, Maine, described the 1816 weather as follows...