The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1916-07-08
Was No Summer Back in 1915.

FrostS every month.
Similar conditions prevailed in Eng
land and privatIons was great in both
countries.
The following account is taken from
the Keokuk County News, of Sigourney
this state, and tells very unusual
weather conditions throughout the
United States a century ago, which
more than one Iowan of New England
stock has heard described back in the
Vermont and New York hills:
The year 1916 was known throuh-
ont the United States and Europe as
the coolest ever experienced by any
person then living There are persons
in Northern New York who have been
in the habit of keeping diaries for years,
and it is from the pages of an old
diary begun in 1916 that the following
information regarding this year without
a summer has been taken.
January was so mild that most peo-
pie allowed their fires to go out and
did not use wood except for cooking.
There were a few cool days, but they
were few. Most of the time the air
was warm and spring like. February
was not cold. Some days were colder
than In January, but the weather was
the same, March from the 1st to the
9th, was inclined to be windy. 1t came
in like a small lion and went out like
very innocent sheep
april came in warm, but as the
days grew longer the air cooled and
by the first of Nay there was a tenn
perature like that of winter with plenty
of snow and ice. In May the young
buds were frozen dead, ice formed
half an inch thick on ponds and rivers,
corn was killed and the corn fields
were planted again until it became too
late to raise a crop. By the last of
May the trees are usually full of leaf.
When the last of May arrived in 1916,
everything was killed by the cold.
June was the coolest month of roses
ever experienced in this latitude.
Frost and ice were as common as but
terfiies usually are. Almost every
green thing was killed, all fruits were
destroyed. Snow fell ten inches deep
in Vermont There was a seven inch
fall in the interior of Massachusetts.
There was only few moderately warm
days Everybody looked, longed and
waited for warm weather, but warm
weather did not come
1T was also dry; very little rain fell
All summer long the wind blew steadily
from the north in blasts, laden with
snow and ice. Mothers knit socks of
double thickness for their children and
made thick mittens and planting and
shivering was done together, and the
farmers who worked out their taxes on
the country roads wore overcoats and
mittens
ION June II, there was a heavy fall
of snow. A Vermont farmer sent a
flock of sheep to pasture on June 18th.
The morning of the 18th dawned with
the thermometer below the freezing
point About g O'Clock in the morning
the owner of the sheep started to look
for his flock. Before leaving home he
turned to his wife and said jokingIy:
Better start the neighbors out soon,
it S the middle of June and 1 may get
lost in the snow"
AN hour after he had left home a
terrible storm came up The snow fell
thick and fast and as there was so
much wind, the fieecy masses piled in
great drifts along the windward side
of the fences and out buildings Night
came and the farmer had not been
heard of.
His wife became frightened and
alarmed the neighborhood. All the
party searched for two days. On the
third day they found him. He was Iy-
ing IN hollow on the side of a hill
with feet frozen, he was half covered
with snow, but alive. Most of the
she6P were lost.
"a farmer near Tewksbury, Vt.
owned a large field of corn. He built