The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer, Poverty Year, the Summer that Never Was and Eighteen Hundred and Freeze to Death. Severe climate abnormalities had caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.7 – 1.3F. Evidence suggests that this anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption on April 10 of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Such eruptions build up a substantial amount of atmospheric dust and temperatures fall worldwide because less sunlight passes through the atmosphere. This was the largest eruption in at least 1,300 years and historian John D. Post called it “the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world.”

This had the greatest effect on most of New England, Atlantic Canada and parts of western Europe. In the spring and summer of 1816, a persistent “dry fog” was observed in parts of the eastern U.S. The fog reddened and dimmed the sunlight, such that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Neither wind or rainfall dispersed the “fog.” It has been characterized as a “stratospheric sulfate aerosol veil.” New England experienced major consequences from this eruption. The corn crop was significantly advanced in New England and the eruption caused the crop to fail. In the summer of 1816 corn was reported to have ripened so badly, no more than a quarter of it was usable for food. The crop failures in New England, Canada and parts of Europe also caused the price of wheat, grains, meat, vegetables, butter, milk and flour to rise sharply.

In the higher elevations of New England and New York, a frost in May 1816 killed off most crops and snow fell in Dennysville, Maine and Albany, New York. In Massachusetts it was reported that “Severe frosts occurred every month: June 7 and 8 snow fell and it was so cold that crops were cut down, even freezing the roots.” In the early Autumn when corn was in the mills, it was so thoroughly frozen that it never ripened and was scarcely worth harvesting. Breadstuffs were scarce and prices high and the poorer class of people were often in straits for want of food. The granaries of the great west had not then been opened by railroad communication and people were obliged to rely upon their own resources or upon others in their immediate locality.

According to a 2012 analysis by Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, this eruption caused a temporary drop in the Earth’s average land temperature of about 1 degree.