A little chunk of winter came in June. All the plants died and people were hungry. Folks were forced to sell or eat their livestock and nearly starved the following winter.
Yup, the Great June Frost occurred on this day in 1859. The night time temperature was 25 degrees from Iowa to New England, according to the National Weather Service.
Here is an interesting story about what it was like, from the point of view of a Civil War Veteran from Warren County. Do go read it if you have a minute. It is a chilling tale, no pun intended, of the frightening hardship caused by that freak of the weather. Here is a short excerpt:
"In the morning I was up at daylight and saw a sight such as I'd never seen before and I've never seen since. All the crops were gone. Everything was frozen stiff, corn, grass, things in the garden. I was a tough, rugged lad, I'd laid away my shoes early in May and wasn't going to bother looking them up again. So I went off down across the pastures to fetch the cows and the grass and weeds were crisp and crackly with the thick frost under my feet."
As of yesterday the high temperature was only one degree above the record lowest high for the date (if that makes any sense at all), but it was a lot warmer than that. In fact the Warren County story makes fifty-nine seem downright balmy.
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