If it has been fairly warm and dry this year, 2008 is certainly is not the warmest. The warmest period of time for both Kern County and much of the nation occurred in the mid 1930s dust bowl. The cold extreme, however, happened exactly 100 years ago.

It was 1908. Mothers Day was first celebrated and the initial Model-T came off an assembly line. The 16th and 17th amendments to the constitution were ratified (authorizing income tax and direct election of senators, respectively). Teddy Roosevelt was president. William Taft won the election that November. Oh yes, and it was very cold in California.

In fact, 49 record low temperature dates throughout the year still bear the mark of that cool year. One year earlier it was chilly as well with 29 record low dates sprinkles throughout the Bakersfield weather calendar. So why was it so cold? An interesting question posed by a viewer last week. They noticed that most every day in recent weeks sported a record low temperature from 1908. I decided to check it out, especially considering that the “all-time” record low temperature for Bakersfield was 12 degrees above zero on January 3rd of, you guessed it- 1908.

As it turned out, a year earlier on March 28, 1907 a huge eruption occurred of the Ksudach volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in far eastern Siberia. It deposited tremendous amounts of ash, sulfur and various particulate matter far up into the stratosphere. Additionally, on May 12, 1907 more volcanic smoke and ash was injected high into atmosphere from dual eruptions of Mounts Etna and Stromboli in the Mediterranean. These aerosols blanketed the upper atmosphere of the northern hemisphere for several years effectively dimming sunlight on the ground. A hazy covering of the earth redirected solar radiation back out into space. The ultimate result was global cooling. Similar events have taken place from time to time over the eons. Whenever multiple volcanic explosions have thrown a cloudy blanket over the earth, people everywhere have had to deal with the cold (and shorter growing seasons, early killing frosts, untimely snowstorms, etc). It is the dreaded “nuclear winter”.

I hadn’t really noticed the 1907-08 cold snap for Kern County before, since the official temperature records only went back to 1928 when airport data was first established. But in July last year new numbers became available. The Tread Ex program, as it’s called, was an exhaustive investigation of extreme temperature records from around the country conducted by Cornell University. Researchers scoured data from sources other than airports to expand the data base. Now, Bakersfield records go back to 1893 for temperature and 1889 for precipitation utilizing old railroad stations and the like. This is new information for many locations across America. It wasn’t widely known that this is the 100th anniversary of such a cold year in Bakersfield. But now we know- and we also know why.