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Damp spring is discouraging? How’d you like to wait all summer for a summer that never came?

By Dean Shalhoup - Senior Staff Writer | May 16, 2020

Courtesy of FOX61.COM This painting depicting a farmer checking his frozen crops during The Year Without a Summer was used in a documentary by TV station Fox61 in Hartford, Connecticut.

It just didn’t seem possible.

I mean, how could temperatures in these parts be in the mid-70s in April, then drop low enough come May for ponds and streams to ice over?

That’s nothing. Can you imagine it snowing in June? We’re not talking a rogue snowflake or two from a rare springtime squall. We’re talking a classic January-like storm that, on June 6, dumped six inches in southern New Hampshire, more up north, and left an accumulation of 18 inches in Cabot, Vermont.

At once sad and humorous, Vermont farmers who had already shorn their sheep tried in vain to reattach their fleeces. Some survived, but most froze to death.

Yet more bizarre than freezing temperatures and June snowstorms, believe it or not, was a temperature swing for the ages.

Courtesy of DISCOVERSTILLWATER.COM A painting titled "A Squall" depicts people struggling in a storm in 1816, known as "The Year Without a Summer."

Weather records show that on June 22, as, appropriately enough, the calendar summer arrived, temperatures in much of central New England suddenly skyrocketed to the opposite end of the thermometer, flirting in many places with the 100-degree mark. Some locales even hit 100. Salem, Mass. recorded 101 degrees.

Did folks dare speculate that the monumental temperature swing may be a harbinger of seasonably stable conditions ahead, perhaps in time to save at least most of the year’s harvest?

Fat chance.

In less than two weeks, that familiar sense of despair returned, vanquishing any trace of remaining optimism.

Even the prospect of celebrating America’s independence, an invariably joyous event in which every man, woman and child took part no matter what, was subdued at best: It was difficult, folks conceded, to play music and sing patriotic songs and fire off celebratory shotgun blasts and send up fireworks when your extremeties are all but numbed by below-freezing temperatures.

Dean Shalhoup

Longtime reporter, columnist and photographer, is back doing what he does best ñ chronicling the people and history of Nashua. Reaching 40 years with The Telegraph in September, Deanís insights have a large, appreciative following.

This is how history describes some of the lowlights of perhaps the most unusual sequence of weather events ever experienced in North America.

Even today experts aren’t 100 percent decided on the precise cause of what became known as “The Year Without a Summer,” but a common theory is the freakish, and lengthy, spate of weather for which 1816 became famous had something to do with the eruption the previous year of Mount Tambora in Indonesia.

“Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death” remains the most recognized “nickname” for 1816, but many also called it the “Poverty Year” for the damage it did to crops, and subsequently pocketbooks, in an era in which farming was by far the most Our friends over at the New England Historical Society featured the Year Without a Summer in a recent online newsletter, making for some fascinating reading interspersed with anecdotes taken from historic accounts.

For instance, New Hampshire Gov. William Plumer ñ a lawyer and Baptist lay preacher from Epping ñ “believed the weather was Godís judgment in the earth, and urged people to humble themselves for their transgressions.”

Gov. William Jones of Rhode Island “issued a proclamation designating a day of public ‘Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving,’ noting the ‘coldness and dryness of the seasons and the ‘alarming sickness,'” according to the NEHS account.

In Franconia, late-season and persistent frost “destroyed the bean crop.” In Kennebunkport, Maine, which one might associate more with the fishing industry, the cold killed the bean, cucumber and squash crops.

Farmers in many New England locales “harvested so little hay that they had to slaughter their livestock, or feed them oats and corn.”

Neighboring Amherst, on Aug. 20, was struck by “a short, violent storm,” which caused temperatures to fall 30 degrees to well below freezing.

If you think Americans’ belief that members of Congress are “out of touch” with the majority of their constituants is a fairly new development, think again:

Despite the widespread suffering the events of 1816 caused, “members of Congress seemed insensitive to the suffering of the people and voted to double their own salary.

“It didnít go over well. Nearly 70 percent of incumbent U.S. representatives were voted out of office” that year ñ including New Hampshire’s generally highly regarded statesman Daniel Webster.

Up in Ashland, meanwhile, lived a farmer named Reuben Whitten, who by all accounts was the antithesis of the elected officials in Washington.

Whitten, who was able to grow wheat on his south-facing farm, generously shared his yield with his neighbors, according to the NEHS feature.

When he died in 1847, “his neighbors paid for his gravestone, and later erected a monument” which they had inscribed in his honor.

It reads: “A pioneer of this town. Cold season of 1816 raised 40 bushils of wheat on this land whitch kept his family and neighbours from starveation.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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