The year when there was no summer.

In 1814, as Europe was struggling with both the Napoleonic Wars and the many years of crop failure and poor harvests caused throughout the Little Ice Age, Mt. Mayon, a Philippine volcano, erupted. The following year Mt. Tambora, in the East Indies, released the largest eruption felt on Earth in nearly 13 centuries. The combination of these two events was catastrophic, releasing enough ash and aerosols into the atmosphere to decrease temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere by just over 1 degree Fahrenheit. The result was global food shortages in 1816.

In Great Britain the drop in temperature led to heavy sustained rains, causing the crops to rot in the fields. Wales was hard hit and Ireland once again saw the failure of its potato, wheat, and oat crops. On the continent of Europe the resulting food shortages led to riots, demonstrations, and increases in thefts and other crimes. Ice dams formed during the summer months in the German and Swiss Alps, from water which would normally be flowing freely down from the mountains. In June Percy Shelley and his wife Mary were forced by the weather to remain indoors while visiting Lake Geneva. Mary amused herself by writing a book which she entitled, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

Northern China saw crops destroyed by floods, livestock killed by starvation and unseasonable cold, with citrus trees killed by frosts as late as July. The Indian subcontinent was ravaged by a cholera epidemic which was spread by the delay of the monsoon season until much later than normal. Eventually the cholera epidemic spread as far north as Moscow, still largely un-rebuilt since its destruction by fire in the aftermath of Napoleon’s occupation in 1812. Both China and India suffered the effects of famine in the aftermath of the crop failures of the non-summer of 1816.

Considerable suffering occurred in North America. The corn and wheat crops of New England failed in 1816. Albany reported falling snow on June 6 and in New Jersey that month saw five straight nights of heavy frost, destroying the fragile crops planted earlier in the year. Massachusetts’ Berkshire Hills were covered with frost on a late August night. Throughout the summer, corn ears on the plants froze solidly, and the plant was destroyed in the daytime thaw. The damage in New England and New York was severe, but it was not alone. Further south the effects were felt as the strange weather continued.

Thomas Jefferson, a farmer himself, noted the dramatic temperature swings felt that summer, when a daytime high could reach the mid-nineties only to near freezing the same night, with frost on the ground and the plants in the morning. Many of the east coast farmers were financially devastated by the summer of 1816, and abandoned their farms in the hope of better luck in the newly freed lands west of the Ohio, in the Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri territories. 1816 was truly the year with no summer, but just one year of the Little Ice Age.

Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“Environmental History Resources – The Little Ice Age ca. 1300 – 1870”, by Environmental History Resources, eh-resources.org, online

“Was the Little Ice Age Triggered by Massive Volcanic Eruptions?”, by Science Daily, January 30, 2012

“Frostiana: Or a History of the River Thames in a Frozen State”, by George Davis, February 5, 1814, pdf

“The Seventeenth Century: Europe in Ferment”, by Alanson Lloyd Moote, 1970

“Winter at Morristown 1779-1780: The Darkest Hour”, by Samuel Stelle Smith, 1979

“Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?”, by Tim Folger, Smithsonian Magazine, March 2017

“War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier”, by John F. Ross, 2011

“Times of Feast, Times of Famine: a History of Climate since the Year 1000”, by Emmanuel LeRoy LaDurie, 1971

“Blast from the Past”, by Robert Evans, Smithsonian Magazine, July 2002