The Year Without Summer Quotes

“Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was feeling the effects of time. “Here a pivot, there a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring will give way,” Jefferson grumbled in a note to Adams. He could no longer walk very far, although he tried to ride two or three hours a day.”
― William K. Klingaman, The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History

“And on the morning of July 18, an eight-year-old girl living in Bath chose to awaken her aunt, a devout believer in the prophecy, by screaming “Aunt, Aunt, the World’s at an end!” The words so startled the poor woman that she fell into a coma, and remained insensate throughout the following day.”
― William K. Klingaman, The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History

“Twenty-four hours after Tambora erupted, the ash cloud had expanded to cover an area approximately the size of Australia. Air temperatures in the region plunged dramatically, perhaps as much as twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Then a light southeasterly breeze sprang up, and over the next several days most of the ash cloud drifted over the islands west and northwest of Tambora. By the time the cloud finally departed, villages within twenty miles of the volcano were covered with ash nearly forty inches thick; those a hundred miles away found eight to ten inches of ash on the ground.”
― William K. Klingaman, The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History

“In fact, scientists have taken advantage of this effect by using the amount of red in contemporary paintings of sunsets to estimate the intensity of volcanic eruptions. Several Greek scientists, led by C. S. Zerefos, digitally measured the amount of red—relative to other primary colors—in more than 550 samples of landscape art by 181 artists from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries to produce estimates of the amount of volcanic ash in the air at various times. Paintings from the years following the Tambora eruption used the most red paint; those after Krakatoa came a close second.”
― William K. Klingaman, The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History