How Would I have Coped?

I feel alive when the sun shines and the reverse during the dark gloomy days of winter.

But the weather we experience these days is nothing compared to the period of 'The Little Ice Age'.

It was a time of cooler climate in most parts of the world. Although there is some disagreement about exactly when the Little Ice Age started, records suggest that temperatures began cooling around 1250 A.D. The coldest time was during the 16th and 17th Centuries. By 1850 the climate began to warm.

Western Europe experienced a general cooling of the climate between the years 1150 and 1460 and a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850. The colder weather impacted agriculture, health, economics, social strife, emigration, and even art and literature.

During this period it was so cold the Thames froze over and was thick enough for Frost Fairs to take place on the ice.

Increased glaciation and storms also had a devastating affect on those that lived near glaciers and the sea.

In the UK. 1683: ... "the cold was so intense that the trunks of oak, ash, walnut, and other trees, were split apart, so that they might be seen through; and the cracks were often attended with noises as loud as the firing of musketry".

One of the worst famines in the seventeenth century occurred in France due to the failed harvest of 1693. Millions of people in France and surrounding countries were killed.

1816 became known as the year without summer. Gloomy cold rains were continual in Europe. The weather didn't seem like summer weather at all. It was cold and stormy and dark. They didn't have the technology to know that it was caused by a volcano on the other side of the world.

Posted via email from Liz's Posterous