It feels like 1816 around here

No one knew on New Year's Day in 1815 that the world was about to change.  The year started as it normally did any other year.  Winter ended, spring started, the world was spinning around as if nothing special was going to happen.  But, the Earth had an opinion about what should happen next.  Too bad the people of Indonesia didn't know that.  They went to bed on April 13th as if the world would continue as it had. But the next day, they heard the Earth's complaint very loudly.

Mount Tambora had a magma chamber beneath it that had been building a long time.  It began to smoke, voicing its complaint that the Earth had built up too much pressure through early warning signs.  The people then didn't know too much about volcanic activity, so they missed the sign.  12,000 people regretted that since they were the casualties of the first round of eruptions and tsunamis.  Mount Tambora exploded on April 14th, 1815, with such ferocity that agriculture around the Polynesian Islands came to a halt.  Plants were rained on with all kinds of lava, hot rocks from the air, pyroclastic flow, and soot. Another 60,000 couldn't find anything to eat and tasted their last meals about a week after the eruption.  Recorded history had never seen an eruption of this magnitude.

That was just the immediate effect on the Earth. The summer and the fall passed while people around Mount Tambora were struggling to get back on their feet. The rest of the world hadn't even heard of the eruption, but they were about to experience its effect.  The winter started, and as it deepened in the early months of 1816, it became really harsh.  Spring was supposed to come, but it was bypassed.  Temperatures were really cool.  Summer was next.  Well, normally it would have been next.  This is the year that was named The Year Without a Summer.  No summer... no crops... famine... cold temps in summer... People died worldwide because of the famine of 1816.  Plants struggled to live without too much light.  Clouds from the volcano were still in place in the atmosphere making photosynthesis difficult.  Volcanic Winter had occurred.

Eventually, the Earth warmed up and had seasons again.  But not in 1816, The Year Without a Summer, the year of Volcanic Winter.  The people of Earth had to endure the effects of Earth's fury whether or not they had heard on April 14, 1815, of the worst eruption in human experience since the Ice Age ended.  That makes me a bit wary as I go through life.  I don't always hear of the matters that affect me, some of them in the greatest way.

I haven't really heard anything lately that might affect me.  But, I see some ash in the sky and it's been a cool spring.  I'm thinking that...