“We have had the most extraordinary year of drought & cold ever known in the history of America. . . . The crop of corn thro’ the Atlantic states will probably be less than 1/3 of an ordinary one, that of tobo still less, and of mean quality. The crop of wheat was midling in quantity, but excellent in quality. But every species of bread grain taken together will not be sufficient for the subsistence of the inhabitants.” --Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Albert Gallatin, 8 September 1816.
1816 was the year without a summer. It was the trough of the Dalton Minimum (not even a grand solar minimum) and was exacerbated by the massive eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which darkened the globe. Violent eruptions tend to coincide with solar minimums.
-WiscoDave
