Editing Year Without a Summer (section)

===North America===
In the spring and summer of 1816, a persistent "dry fog" was observed in parts of the eastern United States. The fog reddened and dimmed sunlight such that [[sunspot]]s were visible to the naked eye. Neither wind nor rainfall dispersed the "fog", retrospectively characterized by [[Clive Oppenheimer]] as a "stratospheric [[sulfate]] [[aerosol]] veil".<ref>{{citation |last1=Oppenheimer |first1=Clive |title=Climatic, environmental and human consequences of the largest known historic eruption: Tambora volcano (Indonesia) 1815 |journal=Progress in Physical Geography |volume=27 |issue=2 |page=230 |year=2003 |bibcode=2003PrPG...27..230O |doi=10.1191/0309133303pp379ra |s2cid=131663534}}.</ref>

The weather was not in itself a hardship for those accustomed to long winters. Hardship came from the weather's effect on crops and thus on the supply of food and firewood. The consequences were felt most strongly at higher elevations, where farming was already difficult even in good years. In May 1816, [[frost]] killed off most crops in the higher elevations of [[Massachusetts]], [[New Hampshire]], [[Vermont]], and [[upstate New York]].<ref name="islandnet1">{{cite web |last=Heidorn |first=Keith C. |date=July 1, 2000 |title=Weather Doctor's Weather People and History: Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death, The Year There Was No Summer |url=http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/1816.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000823154557/http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/1816.htm |archive-date=August 23, 2000 |access-date=October 12, 2017 |publisher=Islandnet.com}}</ref> On June 6, snow fell in [[Albany, New York]], and [[Dennysville, Maine]].<ref name="Oppenheimer2003">Oppenheimer 2003.</ref> In [[Cape May, New Jersey]], frost was reported five nights in a row in late June, causing extensive crop damage.<ref>American Beacon (Norfolk, Virginia), Vol. II, Issue 124 (July 4, 1816), 3.</ref> Though fruit and vegetable crops survived in New England, corn was reported to have ripened so poorly that no more than a quarter of it was usable for food, and much of it was moldy and not even fit for animal feed.<ref name=":0" /> The crop failures in New England, Canada, and parts of Europe caused food prices to rise sharply. In Canada, Quebec ran out of bread and milk, and Nova Scotians found themselves boiling foraged herbs for sustenance.<ref name=":0" />

Sarah Snell Bryant, of [[Cummington]], [[Massachusetts]], wrote in her diary: "Weather backward."<ref>Sarah Snell Bryant diary, 1816 Remarks, original at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifetime (New York: Auburn, Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1857), 2: 78–79, quoted in Glendyne R. Wergland, One Shaker Life: Isaac Newton Youngs, 1793–1865 (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), chapter 2.</ref> At the Church Family of [[Shakers]] near [[New Lebanon, New York]], Nicholas Bennet wrote in May 1816 that "all was froze" and the hills were "barren like winter". Temperatures fell below freezing almost every day in May. The ground froze on June 9; on June 12, the Shakers had to replant crops destroyed by the cold. On July 7, it was so cold that all of their crops had stopped growing. Salem, Massachusetts physician Edward Holyoke—a weather observer and amateur astronomer—while in Franconia, New Hampshire, wrote on June 7, "exceedingly cold. Ground frozen hard, and squalls of snow through the day. Icicles 12 inches long in the shade of noon day." After a lull, by August 17, Holyoke noted an abrupt change from summer to winter by August 21, when a meager bean and corn crop were killed. "The fields," he wrote, "were as empty and white as October."<ref>Edward Holyoke, journal, 1816, in Soon, W., and Yaskell, S.H., Year Without a Summer, Mercury, Vol. 32, No. 3, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, May/June 2003.</ref> The [[Berkshires]] saw frost again on August 23, as did much of New England and upstate New York.<ref>Nicholas Bennet, Domestic Journal, May–September 1816, Western Reserve Historical Society ms. V: B-68, quoted in Wergland, One Shaker Life: Isaac Newton Youngs, 1793–1865, chapter 2.</ref>

Massachusetts historian William G. Atkins summed up the disaster:

<blockquote>Severe frosts occurred every month; June 7th and 8th snow fell, and it was so cold that crops were cut down, even freezing the roots ... In the early Autumn when corn was in the milk [the [[endosperm]] inside the kernel was still liquid]<ref>{{Cite web |title=When should sweet corn be harvested? {{!}} Mississippi State University Extension Service |url=http://extension.msstate.edu/content/when-should-sweet-corn-be-harvested |access-date=2023-12-31 |website=extension.msstate.edu |archive-date=May 29, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240529135705/http://extension.msstate.edu/content/when-should-sweet-corn-be-harvested |url-status=live }}</ref> it was so thoroughly frozen that it never ripened and was scarcely worth harvesting. Breadstuffs were scarce and prices high and the poorer class of people were often in straits for want of food. It must be remembered that the granaries of the great west had not then been opened to us by railroad communication, and people were obliged to rely upon their own resources or upon others in their immediate locality.<ref>William G. Atkins, History of Hawley (West Cummington, Massachusetts (1887), p. 86.</ref></blockquote>

In July and August, lake and river ice was observed as far south as northwestern [[Pennsylvania]]. Frost was reported in [[Virginia]] on August 20 and 21.<ref>American Beacon (Norfolk, Virginia), September 9, 1816, p. 3.</ref> Rapid, dramatic temperature swings were common, with temperatures sometimes reverting from normal or above-normal summer temperatures as high as {{Convert|95|F|C}} to near-freezing within hours. [[Thomas Jefferson]], by then retired from politics to his estate at [[Monticello]] in Virginia, sustained crop failures that sent him further into debt. On September 13, a Virginia newspaper reported that corn crops would be one half to two-thirds short and lamented that "the cold as well as the drought has nipt the buds of hope".<ref>"Crops," American Beacon (Norfolk, Virginia), September 13, 1816, p. 3.</ref> A [[Norfolk, Virginia]], newspaper reported:

<blockquote>It is now the middle of July, and we have not yet had what could properly be called summer. Easterly winds have prevailed for nearly three months past ... the sun during that time has generally been obscured and the sky overcast with clouds; the air has been damp and uncomfortable, and frequently so chilling as to render the fireside a desirable retreat.<ref>Columbian Register (New Haven, Connecticut), July 27, 1816, p. 2.</ref></blockquote>

Regional farmers succeeded in bringing some crops to maturity, but [[maize|corn]] and other [[cereal|grain]] prices rose dramatically. The price of [[oats]], for example, rose from 12¢ per [[bushel]] in 1815 to 92¢ per bushel in 1816. Crop failures were aggravated by inadequate transportation infrastructure; with few roads or navigable inland waterways and no railroads, it was prohibitively expensive to import food in most of the country.<ref>John Luther Ringwalt, ''[[iarchive:bub gb tkcKAAAAIAAJ 3|Development of Transportation Systems in the United States]]'', "Commencement of the Turnpike and Bridge Era", 1888: 27 notes that the very first artificial road was the [[Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike]], 1792–1795, a single route of 62 miles; "it seems impossible to ascribe to the turnpike movement in the years before 1810 any significant improvement in the methods of land transportation in southern New England, or any considerable reduction in the cost of land carriage" (Percy Wells Bidwell, "[https://books.google.com/books?id=frIWAQAAIAAJ Rural Economy in New England] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240529135705/https://books.google.com/books?id=frIWAQAAIAAJ|date=May 29, 2024}}", in ''Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences'', '''20''' [1916: 317]).</ref>

Maryland experienced brown, bluish, and yellow snowfall in April and May, colored by volcanic ash in the atmosphere.<ref name=":0" />