Dear Tom,
I read a story “The Year without a Summer.” When was that, and how did it compare to this summer?
Jim Adair, Wheaton, Ill.
Dear Jim,
The year was 1816, and it featured a summer marked by snow and cold throughout New England and much of the East. Repeated frosts and freezes in all three summer months caused devastating crop failures. In Vermont, 20-inch snow drifts and ice-covered lakes occurred in June, and it snowed in Rochester, N.Y., in all three summer months. Similar conditions occurred in eastern Canada and in Western Europe. The unseasonable cold was a result of the massive 1815 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mt. Tambora, which thrust huge amounts of volcanic ash into the stratosphere, blocking incoming sunlight.
While this summer in the eastern U.S. has been unusually cool, it does not come close to matching the cold of the summer of 1816.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
Write to: ASK TOM WHY, 2501 Bradley Pl., Chicago, IL 60618 or asktomwhy@wgntv.com (Mail volume precludes personal response.)
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
