Judd speaks about ‘Year Without a Summer’ on ‘Bill Green’s Maine’
Richard Judd, the McBride Professor of History at the University of Maine, was featured on an episode of “Bill Green’s Maine” on WLBZ (Channel 2) and WCSH (Channel 6 in Portland). Judd spoke about 1816, which is referred to as the “Year Without a Summer,” and took Green to Special Collections in UMaine’s Fogler Library to see the recorded history of the event. The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia spewed enormous amounts of volcanic ash into the stratosphere, lowering the temperature between 4 and 7 degrees worldwide, according to the report. In Maine, the colder temperatures made farming a challenge, the report states. “The story goes that there was snow every month of the year,” Judd said. “No one can confirm that, but it certainly was cold every month of the year. There were hard frosts in September, so any crops that did manage to come up over the course of the summer they lost in September anyway.”