17. Tambora’s Eruption Changed Global Weather for a Year
The eruption of Mount Tambora spewed ash and twelve cubic miles of gasses up into the skies. The result was extreme weather conditions around the planet. The fine ash dispersed throughout the atmosphere created optical phenomena worldwide. It produced prolonged and brilliantly colored sunsets and twilights that were red or orange near the horizon, and pink or purple above. The ashes had another, less lovely impact. They caused a volcanic winter that lowered global temperatures and turned 1816 into what came to be known as The Year Without Summer.
The temperature drop caused an agricultural disaster of crop failures and food shortages in the northern hemisphere. Among the weird and extreme weather phenomena caused by Tambora was the impact thousands of miles away, on the far side of the planet in the eastern US. There, the spring and summer of 1816 were marked by a persistent dry fog that reddened and dimmed the sunlight. That May, a frost killed off most crops in upstate New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Snow fell as late as June 6th in Albany, NY. Other parts of the world also recorded strange weather phenomena that year.
