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"The killer in the comparison is that the temperature surge after 1688 was followed by a sudden plunge into one of the coldest periods in the entire Little Ice Age!" says Avery. "The cold of 1739-40 was called The Great Frost, and it devastated Europe from Italy to Iceland." "The Great Frost followed a period of very few sunspots—the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715)," says Avery. "The modern world has just undergone a similar dearth of sunspots, from 2007 to 2011." Europe’s glaciers did not advance during the sunspot dearth, says Avery. "But during and after the winter of 1739, glaciers advanced strongly through France and Germany, and north into Sweden, Norway and Iceland and didn’t retreat for the next 50 years!" In Ireland, "rivers, lakes, and waterfalls froze and fish died in the first few weeks of the Great Frost. Coal dealers found their coal piles and unloading docks frozen solid. Mill-wheels froze, so the millers and bakers could produce no bread." Ireland’s crucial potato crop froze underground, Avery continues. "The tubers were ruined for food, and useless as seed for the following year. The following spring came drought.... The winter wheat and barley sown the previous fall died in the fields. Sheep and cattle died in the pastures." By the summer of 1741 "an estimated 400,000 people had died."
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