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The "Year Without A Summer" occurred in 1816, after the April 5-April 15, 1815 volcanic eruptions of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies (in today's Indonesia) ejected over a million and a half tons of dust into the upper atmosphere. The dust blocked some sunlight from reaching the ground over the
northern hemisphere, reducing temperatures significantly.
New Englanders and eastern Canadians were hit the hardest. In May of 1816 frost killed off much of the
crops that had been planted, and in June two large snowstorms resulted in many
human deaths as well. In July and August, ice formed on some lakes in Canada. Even though farmers south of New England did
succeed in bringing some crops to maturity, maize (corn) and other grain prices rose dramatically. Oats, for example, rose from 12 cents a
bushel the previous year to 92 cents a bushel.
Many historians cite the year without a summer, sometimes called eighteen hundred and froze to death, as a
primary motivation for the rapid settlement of what is now the American Midwest. Many New Englanders were wiped out by the year, and tens of thousands struck out for the richer soil and better
growing conditions of the Upper Midwest.
Europe, still recuperating from the Napoleonic Wars, suffered from
food shortages. Food riots broke out in Britain and France and grain warehouses were looted. The violence was worst in landlocked
Switzerland, where famine caused the government to declare a national emergency.
American climatologist William Humphreys eventually determined the cause of the year without summer in 1920, after reading a
treatise written by Ben Franklin in 1783 blaming the unusually cool summer of that year on volcanic dust coming from Iceland.
A comparable episode happened earlier in the 6th century, see climate changes of 535-536.
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