In Europe, the summer was similarly wintry but it also seemed like it got all the rain that North America had been missing. Crops that are sensitive to having too much water, like wine grapes, really suffered in their quality when they managed to survive. Because horses were the main source of transportation and grain became so much more expensive, the cost of travel in Europe skyrocketed. In Ireland, a typhus epidemic spread in the wake of the famine.
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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.