Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1875 — Severe Seasons. [ARTICLE]

Severe Seasons.

It is a common remark in any unusual stress of either heat or cold that “Never was anything like it known,” while the oldest inhabitant loses his memory and pronounces the weather in his experience unparalleled. But the annals of history show that from time to time since the advent of man into the world remarkably frigid winters and torrid summers have upset the calculations and ruffled the equanimity of the inhabitants of temperate zones. Several times the frost-king has been known to come down from the heights of Europe-and seal the waters of the Adriatic. In 860 »nd 1224 the ice formed a secure bridge from Venice to the opposite Dalmatian coast. In the winter of 1621-’22 the fleet was lee-bound near the “ City of the Doges,” and again in 1709 the Adriatic was completely covered with ice. All the rivers of France were frozen in the years 1305 and 1364, the ice on the river Rhone being in some places fifteen feet thick. In 1709 the cold was intense in the south of France; most of the fruit trees were destroyed, and many persons were frozen to death on the roads, while at Cette and Marseilles the sea was icebound for a great distance out. The winter of 1788-’B9 was rigorous throughout Europe. The Rhone was frozen over at Lyons and the Garonne at Toulouse. The Thames wasbhut as far as Gravesend, and at the Christmas holidays the river was covered with booths. The Atlantic froze along its coasts to a distance of severalleagues, and vessels were unable to approach within several miles of Ostend, in Belgium, a port that ordinarily is open throughout the year. The birds of the Arctic regions descended as far south as France, and the fish perished in all the ponds from the thickness of the ice. The winter of 1812-’l3 is memorable for its extreme degree of cold, which began at an early date. The horrors which Napoleon’s army suffered from the bitter weather in the fatal retreat from Moscow suffice to fix the season indelibly in the memory. The following year the winter was so glacial in the south of England that in February a sheep was roasted on the frozen Thames, and at a fair held on the 4th of the month the space between London and Blackfriars bridges was filled with spectators. Snow fell in New England in every month of the year 1816, and the weather was so uniformly chilly that scanty crops of every sort were harvested. Little or no com was raised, and something like a famine was threatened for man and beast.

In Western Europe the winter of 1840’4l was among the severest on record. The season is notable as that in which the body of Napoleon was transferred from St. Helena to the Church of the Invalides in Paris, The temperature was so low on the day that the funeral procession passed through the city that many of the spectators who watched its progress from steflon s out of doors perished from exposure. The spring was early in New England in the, year 1834, but on the 15th of May, after the gardens were made and the vegetables well up, and the currant-bushes in blossom, the snow fell to the depth of a foot. Nothing was injured, however, by its burial under the thick, downy blanket, and the summer was unusually fruitful. Turning from winters distinguished by excessive rigor to summers that are remarkable for their ardor, we find that one of the hottest seasons ever experienced in England and France occurred in 1793. For fifty-one days, beginning with July 1, the thermometer ranged in Londbn from 78 degrees to 95 degrees—a most uncommon height. July 8 it stood at 101, yet the heat wais more oppressive on Aug. 7, when it marked but 87, for- a sultry wind blew as from a furnace, and “paralyzed respiration.” The drought, too, was excessive. The waters of the Seine had not been so low for seventy-four years. Vegetation was withered and driea. The foliage of the vine and fruit trees was scorched and shriveled. The trees in the Palais Royal dropped most of their leaves; no less than 150 were stripped entirely bare, and many of them died. The soil in the gardens of the Luxembourg was dry as a bed of ashes to the depth of three and a half feet, and in the neighborhood of Toulouse the com crop entirely failed. Everywhere the ground was baked and cracked by the heat, and grass and herbage almost died out.

In France, Belgium and England the summer of 1842 was one of the most torrid of the present century. Ten years later the summer was, in the same countries, scarcely less trying. Many domestic animals dropped dead from the heat while laboring in the fields. The year 1589 is noteworthy, not fei* a warm summer, but a mild winter. In Wurtemburg, a chronicle of the times tells us, the trees budded at Christmas. In February the strawberries ripened and in April the vines blossomed. But in May a change came over the scene; snow fell and the vines and the fruit-blossoms were gilled. Yet the season was still so early that the vines put forth new foliage and flowers, and the usual amount of wine was produced. Yet more remarkable for a reverse of the seasons was the year 1186, when the apple-trees blossomed in January and their fruit was large as hazel-nuts in February. The harvest of this extraordinary year was in May and the vintage in August. July 21, 1832, the weather suddenly changed from intense heat to such a degree of cold that the potatoes and cereals were frozen in the elevated districts of Wurtemburg. Three years after there was a similar abrupt fall of the temperature in France at the close of J une, which covered the mountains with snow at Bourbon and the plains with hoar-frost in the Auvergne. It is remarked by observers that extreme weather in any one region on the earth is balanced by the opposite phenomenon in some other region; thus, while a winter or a summer of unusual severity prevails in one part of the world it generally happens that the same season is elsewhere uncommonly While in the winter of 1739-’4O navigation was completely closed by ice on the river Thames, and the German Ocean was frozen as far as ten miles out from Ostend, and eight to ten feet of snow fell in Spain and Portugal, the inhabitants of Greenland and Iceland were reveling in extraordinarily mild weather.

It was remarkably warm in most parts of Europe, especially in the northern countries, during the winter of 1821—’22; and meantime the temperature in South America was extremely low, on Feb. 20 the snow falling at Buenos Ayres. The winter of 1829-’3O was so severe in Southwestern Europe that the Lake of Constance was, for the first time known to the present generation, completely frozen over, yet in the United States the weather was very soft and pleasant. On the other hand, Europe enjoyed a gentle season in the summer of 1884-’35, while terrible cold reigned in America. In early January the harbors of Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore were locked with ice. The orange trees were killed to their roots in Florida, and the evergreen oaks lost their foliage and kept back their new leaves un til March 20. At this time the summerlike winter of Europe suddenly assumed a harsh aspect, and snow and frost prevailed for a time over England and Germany. Again, while we on this side of the Atlantic suffered from the excessive cold of 1872-’73, the ground Was scarcely frozen during the entire season in Europe.—Chicago Tribune.