11. Pretty Skies and Ugly Weather
Tambora hurled ash and twelve cubic miles of gasses into the skies, causing extreme weather conditions around the planet. The fine ash dispersed throughout the atmosphere created odd optical phenomena throughout the world. The results included prolonged and brilliantly colored sunsets and twilights that were red or orange near the horizon, and pink or purple above. However, the ashes had other impacts that were not so pretty.
The ash caused a volcanic winter, which lowered global temperatures and turned 1816 into what came to be known as The Year Without Summer. The result was disastrous crop failures and food shortages in the northern hemisphere. The weird weather phenomena reached thousands of miles away, all the way to the eastern United States. There, the spring and summer of 1816 were marked by a persistent dry fog that reddened and dimmed the sunlight. That May, a frost killed off most crops in upstate New York, as well as Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, and snow fell as late as June 6th in Albany, NY. Similar examples of unusual weather were recorded around the world.