Climate, Gods, and Monsters

The snow falling outside my window reminds me of The Year without a Summer, 1816. It also reminds me to pray to Rívorí for some more Global Warming!

But anyway, 1816. In northern Europe and eastern North America, it snowed off and on throughout the year, killing crops and humans and everything in between. Apparently there'd be days where the temperature would switch from the 90s down to freezing in a few hours.

This was at the tail end of the Little Ice Age, when generally the planet was getting warmer. But then a huge volcano erupted in Indonesia and cooled the planet back down with its ash.

A couple interesting tidbits I discovered about the summer of 1816:

Joseph Smith moved his family from Vermont to western New York because his crops died. A few years later, he'd get a visit from an angel and start a religion.

Over in Switzerland, a national emergency was declared by the government. But it didn't really ruin Mary Shelley's vacation in Geneva. She and her friends spent the summer cooped up indoors, hiding from the incessant rain, so they decided to have a contest amongst themselves to write the scariest story. Her finished product? Frankenstein.