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From: Susan S Buckley <>
Subject: Re: the summer of 1816
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 16:43:04 -0700

Something I received from another list that was quite
interesting. Enjoy!

A YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER, l8l6

Decatur County Journal
June 9, l892
The year without a summer, l8l6, is now being quite generally
recalled. According to the records, January and February of
that year were warm and springlike, March was cold and
stormy. Vegetation had gotten well along in April when real
winter set in. Sleet and snow fell on seventeen different days
in May. In June there was either frost or snow every night but
three. The snow was five inches deep for several days in
succession in the interior of New York and from ten inches to
three feet in Vermont and Maine. July was cold and frosty,
ice formed as thick as window panes in every one of the
New England States. August was still worse; ice formed
nearly an inch in thickness, and killed nearly every green
thing in the United States and in Europe. In the spring of
l8l7, corn, which had been kept over from the crop of l8l5,
sold for from $5 to $l0 a bushel, the buyers purchasing for
seed. We had other cold summers, but none that have
equalled l8l6 in that respect. On May l0, l835, snow fell to
the depth of a foot in Jamestown, Va., and was piled up in
huge drifts in most of the northern states. There was snow
in many parts of Iowa and Illinois on May ll, l878, and again
as late as May 2l, l882.
--Register

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