On June 6, 1816, more than 5 inches of snow fell in communities across Maine.

“The extraordinary cold state of the atmosphere during the week past, surpasses the recollection of the oldest person among us,” reads the Portland Argus from the week after.

Historians call 1816 “The Year Without a Summer” or “Eighteen-Hundred-and-Froze-to-Death.”

Temperatures didn’t rise above the 40s for days, and a chill enveloped the world as ash and dust from massive volcanic eruptions drastically changed the global climate.

“We had a killing frost every month at this latitude. No crops came to fruition,” said Harold Borns of the University of Maine Climate Change Institute.

Though people at the time were more likely to attribute the freeze to divine intervention, scientists now know that it was the result of one of the most violent volcanic periods in modern human history.

In 1815, Mount Tambora, located on the Sumbawa Island of Indonesia, sent tons of dust into the stratosphere in what geologists call “the most powerful eruption in recorded history.”

The volcanic dust traveled around the world, blocking the sun and suddenly cooling average temperatures worldwide by about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The volcano was positioned in the right direction that it shot ash right up into the atmosphere,” Borns said. “It was just like a shade.”

In circa 1816 New England, the growing season was truncated enough that crops could not mature, and food shortages resulted.

“We have heard that in some instances, the corn is totally destroyed, the plant being frozen to the seed,” reported the American Advocate in Hallowell after the snowstorm hit in June that year.

“Fears are entertained for the safety of various fruits and vegetables,” wrote the Portland Gazette.

Some Mainers subsisted on clover heads stewed in butter when their grain crops failed. Hundreds of others became so disheartened that they packed up their belongings and left the state for the West – a condition known locally as “Ohio fever.”

Historians estimate that as many as half of the people living in the portion of Massachusetts that became Maine in 1820 fled to greener fields.

Larger eruptions have occurred, most notably a volcano called Toba that affected the global climate for centuries when it erupted 75,000 years ago. Even smaller eruptions, such as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, have the power to change the world’s weather for several years.

However, scientists today still turn to 1815-16 as the prime example of the lingering impact a volcano can have on Earth’s climate.