Vermont June 7th 1816

[knocker]

We shouldn't really moan about summer.

 

This date in the "year without a summer" (1816) a snowstorm hit Northern New England with 20" drifts in Danville and flurries all the way into Boston.

 

http://www.virtualvermont.com/history/1816.html

 

It was also the year of a forgotten famine in Ireland that killed 150, 000 that was directly related to the weather.

[Lettucing Gutted]

I wonder if detailed synoptic charts will ever be reconstructed for the Summer of 1816.  It would be interesting to see exactly how the exceptional summer snowstorm and exceptional summer cold weather unfolded.  I remember also reading that one day in June 1816 in New England temperatures dropped from 30C+ to freezing in just a few hours.  It would be interesting to see the gradients in upper level heights and upper level temps that made that happen.

Edited June 8, 2014 by Craig Evans

[knocker]

There has been much written about 1816 particularly in the US but whether any charts have been reconstructed I've no idea (at the moment). The general synopsis for beginning of June (sounds like the shipping forecast). There was intense, stationary high-pressure system off the east coast of Greenland in late May. This effectively blocked the eastward trajectory of weather systems, funneling Arctic air southward. As this cold air encountered the warmer atmosphere to the south through the week of May 28-June 4, it brought wildly unstable conditions to New England and Canada. And the exaggerated temperature gradient across the mid-Atlantic latitudes intensified the overall energy of the emerging system.

 

EDIT

From temperatures in at least the low eighties, on June 5-6 the mercury plunged forty-three degrees in Boston and forty-nine degrees in Salem, Massachusetts, over the course of twenty-six hours. A similar severe temperature swing of at least forty degrees was noted in Albany, New York, as the cold front moved in.

Edited June 8, 2014 by knocker

[knocker]

Daily Synoptic Weather Map Analysis of the New England Cold Wave and Snowstorms of 5 to 11 June 1816

 

Abstract

Daily weather maps for 5–11 June 1816 depict the unprecedented June snowstorms and freezing weather events in the northeast US. New sources of data never previously used include ships’ logbooks, newspaper extracts and weather journals. The highlight of this work is the discovery and documentation of a hurricane affecting Florida for a four-day period during the cold wave. In addition, newspaper accounts have added new instrumental temperature data including the lowest temperature yet found in the US during this remarkable cold wave. This chapter highlights the large amount of unused data still available for use in reconstructing historical climate variation.

 

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-90-481-2828-0_8

 

This chapter can be found on Google Bools.

 

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uKvz3ob0SuoC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=daily+synoptic+weather+map+analysis+of+the+new+england+cold+wave&source=bl&ots=gHFuTxTIDa&sig=XlDQgh3LNrf4ImRdynbXWiDF6eE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=syaUU96rO4bvOoKjgaAF&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=daily%20synoptic%20weather%20map%20analysis%20of%20the%20new%20england%20cold%20wave&f=false