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Figure 9.1.
The volcanic summer storm of June 6, 1816—the most famous extreme weather event in
nineteenth-century America—enveloped most of New England. The frigid system extended as far south as
Bennington, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire, bringing snows even to the northern border of Mas-
sachusetts. (Adapted from Henry Stommel and Elizabeth Stommel,
Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, the
Year without a Summer
[Newport, RI: Seven Seas Press, 1983], 28-29.)
Extreme weather was now guaranteed. A depression passing across the Great Lakes stalled
abruptly over Quebec, where it developed into a massive trough, sucking cold air into New
England. A sudden cold snap was followed by two seasonable days in excess of 80°F, then
widespread frosts on the night of June 3-4. In a normal year, such a night would mark an
exceptional minimum temperature for June. But not in the Tambora year, 1816. Riding its
unnaturally southerly jet stream, the cold front, mixing with warmer air above, brought icy
precipitation to upstate New York and destructive thunderstorms to Pennsylvania. North of
Harrisburg, a thousand acres of oats and rye were destroyed. Meanwhile, down in Virginia,
pioneer meteorologist Thomas Jefferson recorded another dry day at his Monticello farm and
worried about the effects of the developing drought on his fragile wheat crop.
On June 5, weather along the Atlantic seaboard turned full topsy-turvy. The sky turned
black with hailstones at what is now Winston-Salem in North Carolina, while, to the rear
of the storm track, Boston baked in temperatures over 90°. In the wake of this depression,
however, the high-pressure system asserted itself once more, ushering in the frigid, northwest
winds that would bring unwelcome Christmas snows to New England on June 6 and 7: “the
who had planted their major crops in the spring had already experienced the dreaded “black
frost” in mid-May. The cold wave of June 5-11 that dumped a foot or more of snow across
the Northeast fully devastated their corn and grain fields. The region's orchards, where apple
trees had only just blossomed, suffered massive losses. Birds fell stone dead out of trees, while
farmers feared for the survival of their sheep, recently shorn. Frost conditions spread south to
Richmond, Virginia, by June 9, and to the west as far as Cincinnati.
Had the June frosts been a singular event, resilient farmers along the East Coast might
have prevailed with their second or third crops, and 1816 not passed into legend as the disas-
trous Year without a Summer. Through an anxious June, northern farmers prayed for deliver-
ance. “Great frost,” wrote Calvin Mansfield of Connecticut in his weather journal—“we must
learn to be humble.” But a frigid weather system similar to the early June snowstorm returned
again in the first week of July. In the wake of this second disaster, the
New Hampshire Patri-
farmers' hopes a third time.
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