The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman Page B

Quebec Gazette , “and even among the shipping. Many of them dropped down dead in the streets, and
     many were destroyed by thoughtless or cruel persons. The swallows entirely disappeared
     for several days.” In the countryside, newly shorn sheep perished from the cold.
    That night the ground around Quebec froze; the following day the thermometer never
     rose above freezing, and more snow fell. With the summer solstice less than two weeks
     away, “the roofs of the houses, the streets and squares of the town, were completely
     covered with snow,” observed the Quebec Gazette . On the morning of June 8, “the whole of the surrounding country was in the same
     state, having … the appearance of the middle of December.” More snow fell that day,
     and more on June 9. An unfortunate traveler about a dozen miles outside of Quebec
     struggled to plow through snowdrifts that rose up to the axletrees of his carriage.
     Every night the ground froze, and the wind continued to blow strongly from the northwest,
     “driving before it an immense mass of lowering clouds, which constantly concealed
     the sun.” When the sun finally returned on June 10, the land west of the Chaudière
     River was still covered with snow, in some places about a foot deep.
    Montreal received less snow, but on June 7 “the frost was sharp, ice as thick as a
     dollar [coin], which has injured tender as well as hardy plants.” Since wheat farmers
     already had planted much of their supply of seeds, the Montreal Herald advised its readers to share their dwindling supplies with their poorer neighbors—and
     plant as many potatoes as possible, in case the wheat crop failed completely. “Early
     this morning some snow fell,” the Herald noted on June 8, “and the frost was as severe as on yesterday morning.”
    As the low-pressure system tracked across New England on June 6 and 7, the cold front
     caused temperatures to drop by 30 degrees or more and the winds shifted from mild
     southwesterlies to gale-force northwesterlies. With Quebec and Montreal already enveloped
     in snow, a second band of precipitation—first rain, then snow—formed south of the
     Saint Lawrence River and spread from west to east. In Danville, Vermont, a piercing,
     cold wind made it seem like November. Snow and occasionally hail began around 10 A.M. on June 6 and continued until evening. “Probably no one living in the country ever
     witnessed such weather,” claimed the Danville North Star , “especially of so long continuance.” A heavy snow fell in and around Waterbury,
     about twenty miles north of Montpelier, but much of it melted as it hit the ground,
     which was still near its normal summer temperature. In the hills outside of Middlebury,
     however, the snow piled up three inches deep, and Rutland presented “a novel spectacle,
     to see the ground covered with snow on the 6th of June, and the Green Mountains whitened
     with the same for two or three successive days.” Some Vermont farmers who had recently
     shorn their sheep reportedly attempted to tie the fleeces back on the unfortunate
     animals, but many froze to death anyway. As in Quebec, wild birds flew into barns
     and houses to flee the cold; “you could pick up numbed hummingbirds, yellow birds,
     martins, and ‘scarlet sparrows’ in your hand,” recalled one writer, “and many were
     found dead in the fields.”
    At Bennington, a farmer named Benjamin Harwood noted in his diary that “it had rained
     much during the night and this morning [June 6] the wind blew exceedingly high from
     NE, raining copiously, chilling and sharp gusts.” It began to snow about 8 A.M. , and continued desultorily until early afternoon until about an inch and a half lay
     on the ground. By the time it was done, “the heads of all the mountains on every side
     were crowned with snow,” and five of his family’s sheep had been lost in the storm.
     It was, Harwood concluded, “the most gloomy and extraordinary weather