It's halfway through June, and for those of us who love Maryland's melting heat and humidity, many are wondering — where is summer?

For me, though, thoughts turn to the birth of Frankenstein.

First things first. In 1816, there really was a "year without summer." Carol Lee, in her book, "Legacy of the Land," explains that the year without summer caused quite a bit of hardship in Carroll County. "Farmers in Maryland and elsewhere would remember 1816 as ... 'eighteen hundred and starve-to-death.' " According to Lee, there were freezing temperatures well into June.

What caused the year without summer? According to a July 2002 article in Smithsonian magazine, "Blast from the Past," by Robert Evans, the agricultural and economic catastrophe of 1816 was a volcanic winter, caused by the eruptions of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, in what we now know as Indonesia, April 5-15, 1815.

Evans described the eruption as the "most destructive explosion on earth in the past 10,000 years," and said it "blasted 12 cubic miles of gases, dust and rock into the atmosphere," killing an estimated 90,000 people.

No one died here in Carroll County that we're aware of, but in addition to the crop failure and economic collapse, the volcanic winter had widespread impacts that are still felt, to a certain degree, to this day.

For one thing, it spurred the westward expansion of the United States. "Thousands left New England for what they hoped would be a more hospitable climate west of the Ohio River," wrote Evans. "Partly as a result of such migration, Indiana became a state in 1816 and Illinois in 1818."

In Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, the weather prompted many folks to pack up and leave ... for America.

"It rained nonstop in Ireland for eight weeks. The potato crop failed. Famine ensued," wrote Evans.

Meanwhile in Switzerland in 1816, "Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his soon-to-be wife, Mary Wollstonecraft ... sat out a June storm reading a collection of German ghost stories."

Which brings me to the reason cold summer weather makes me think of the big guy with bolts in his neck. Evans noted that the mood surrounding old, cold and dark weather was captured in Byron's "Darkness," a narrative poem set when the "bright sun was extinguish'd'."

It was also during this point that "the future Mary Shelley ... began work on her novel, 'Frankenstein,' about a well-meaning scientist who creates a nameless monster from body parts and brings it to life by a jolt of laboratory-harnessed lightning."

Evans notes that Frankenstein has long-since served as a cautionary allegory that serves "as a warning not to overlook the consequences of humanity's tampering with nature." On the other hand, maybe he's just reminding us village folk that it's not a bad idea to keep a torch handy on these cool summer nights.

When he is not playing with laboratory-harnessed lightning, Kevin Dayhoff may be reached at kevindayhoff@gmail.com or visit him at www.westminstermarylandonline.net.

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