1816 - The Year without a Summer

While discussing the Clypeate’s future with George Washington, Hesperus reveals Tobias Lear will meet an untimely demise, and provides clues to when this will happen:

He will know the time approaches when the natural world enters a great upheaval, and the day arrives when his lintel is marked.

On the night of October 11, 1816, Tobias notes the mark on his doorframe and calls an emergency Clypeate meeting. He addresses them:

My brethren, by all accounts this year the natural world has been out of sorts, dry fog all down the Atlantic seaboard, ice and frost late into the summer months, crops withering in the fields.

Tobias Lear is describing 1816’s weather, known as the “Year Without a Summer.” In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, the largest volcanic eruption in 20,000 years. Large amounts of volcanic ash and sulfur were released into the atmosphere, creating a cloud the size of Australia, blocking sunlight from reaching the Earth. Global temperatures dropped by 2 to 7° F, leading to crop failures and increased disease, with summer snowstorms in Europe and North America.

In May frost killed off crops in New England and, in June, heavy snow covered New York and Maine. In July, lakes and rivers remained frozen as far south as Pennsylvania, with frost present in Virginia through late August.

1816’s unusual weather inspired many Gothic tales, most famously Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. More frightening than her novel, however, are the Obturvai’s plans for Tobias Lear.