Freakish Down East Climate Falls Short This Year of Former Record

Salt water bathing, traditional balm of the summer scholar, will have to be left to the schrod for the next few days at least, according to local weather experts who predicted a week-long cold snap last night.

Due to the chill breezes forecast for the coming week, aquatic activities of summer students will remain confined to the 50 yard swimming test for new men administered in the Indoor Athletic Building, and the dorm shower.

Icepicks Out This Year

Assurance came from Washington weather men, however, that Charles River wherry enthusiasts won't have to mount icebreaker prows on the bow, as in the so-called summer of 1816. In June of that year snow fell six inches deep throughout New England.

On the Fourth of July celebrants in these parts had to set off their Roman candies with mittens, and bonfires were the prevailing expression of patriotism. Delinquent students attending the make-up summer school of that year went to eight o'clock section meetings on snowshoes, and commuters fell back on dog teams.

American historians often refer to 1816 as the "era of good feeling," with reference to President Monroe's bipartisan election. Harvard chronicles of that year substitute the word "numb," more frequently when the thermometer on August 29 registered 37 degrees.

Weather experts say the unusual weather in 1816 was caused by great volcanic eruptions from 1811 through 1815 which supposedly exploded so much dust and ashes into the upper atmosphere that the warmth of the sun's rays was seriously diminished.

Still a Riddle

P. F. Button, a government forecaster in Chicago, said that weather men could not explain why this year's cold, wet spring" had continued so long. No one has yet suggested that the rising clouds of three atomic bombs could have dispersed the proper performance of Old Sol.