The year without a summer prompted people to start making more routine observances and recordings of weather conditions. The first published weather forecasts came out in the US in 1849. "I was not expecting all of the famines and deaths," says Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote last time about this time of year.
The 2015 episode covers a volcano eruption in Sumbawa, Indonesia in 1816, that combined with several other factors to create an unusual -- and catastrophic -- series of weather events.
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