The demise of frozen rivers and home ice houses is testimony to climate change between the 1700s and the present. Notes on the State of Virginia. In his chapter on climate, he detailed the changes in climate that he and his contemporaries witnessed. A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged.
Snows are less frequent and less deep.
They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two or three days, and very rarely a week. They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep and of long continuance. The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months of every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now. This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which is very fatal to fruits.