
The crater at the top of the peak (called a caldera) began to
rumble. At one point, a dark cloud formed above the volcano.
The
volcano had been dormant for hundreds and hundreds of years, but it
looked like it was waking up. Sure enough, on this date in 1815, an
eruption spit out ash and gas.
The
people of the nearby village of Tambora—and the people of the
island of Sumbawa—and even the people of the other Indonesian
islands, hundreds of miles away—heard thunderous booms. Ash started
to fall from the skies.
Five
days later, the largest volcanic eruption in history shook
Tambora-the- mountain and, sadly, eliminated Tambora-the-village.
The
Tambora eruption was TEN TIMES more powerful than the more famous
Krakatoa eruption of 1883!
![]() |
This chart compares the eruption of Tambora to three smaller but more famous eruptions: Mt. Vesuvius, which destroyed Pompeii; Krakatoa, also in Indonesia; and Mount St. Helens, in Washington state. |

And
the ash fell. And fell. And fell some more.
Some
of the tiniest particles of ash stayed high up in the atmosphere, and
blew around in the wind currents, and blocked the sun. The next year,
1816, was called “The Year Without a Summer” in the United States
and Europe, because the volcanic eruption put so much ash and sulfur
into the atmosphere that more sunshine was reflected away from the
Earth, back into space, and the temperatures dropped all over the
world. This phenomenon is called a volcanic winter—and during this
one, it snowed in Boston, Massachusetts, in July!
Like
any global climate change, this volcanic winter caused hardship and
death as some crops failed, some livestock died, and thousands of
people starved.
Tambora
is now called the Pompeii of the East because archaeologists have
begun to excavate the lost culture of Tambora that had been buried by pyroclastic flows. The team of scientists
had to cut through a “pavement” of pumice and hardened ash about
10 feet (3 m) thick!

Also
on this date:
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