Begging God for Rain: The European Megadrought and Great Heatwave of 1540

 The Vicar stands at the pulpit and addresses the packed congregation inside the cathedral.  It is sweltering.  The midsummer sun beats down on the stained glass windows.  Many, early on that Sunday morning, nearly swoon from the heat.  Already, just a few hours past dawn, the temperature has risen well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

He reads, in Latin, from the Book of Deuteronomy:

“Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.”

-Deuteronomy 11:17-18 KJV

All across Europe that Sunday in July of 1540 this scene repeats itself.  In churches, Protestant and Catholic, Vicars, Priests, Reverends and Christian holy men of all sorts and denominations read from scripture and lead their flocks in prayer--begging for rain and a respite from the oppressive heat.

At the start of the 16th century the Protestant Reformation swept across the continent and seemingly overnight plunged the western world into a great upheaval, but now, barely three decades later, men and women of all faiths implore God Almighty to free them of this burden; to lift this oppressive heat and to bring rain to finally end this apocalyptic drought.  This is the European Megadrought and Great Heatwave of 1540, one of the most calamitous extreme weather events to ever befall western civilization.

During an eleven month period stretching from the end of 1539 through almost the entirely of the year 1540 there was little to no rain across all of Europe from the British Isles in the east all the way to Poland in the west, and from the Mediterranean Basin in the south to the fjords of Scandinavia in the north.

Temperatures everywhere regularly exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day for almost the whole year.  Chroniclers of the time record how there was no winter and how the whole of 1540 felt like one long and extended July.

Leaves across the continent dried, withered, died and fell from the trees in the middle of summer.  Tree limbs were bare and devoid of foliage in June in France and England making the landscape look more like late January rather than early July. 

Tens of thousands of farm laborers died from heat exhaustion in the fields where they worked and lay prostrate, dead from exposure and dehydration and left to rot where they fell. 

Wildfires swept through forests across Central Europe.  Rural villages throughout Germany literally went up in smoke as peasants and townspeople ran for their lives into the countryside to flee the oncoming wildfires.

One Swiss chronicler observed that the, “People searched--ever more desperate for drinking water…thousands of people along the River Ruhr died of poisoning from consuming dirty water.”

In the heat and the drought dysentery was the number one killer.  It is estimated that during 1540 perhaps as many as half a million people across Europe may have died from drinking contaminated, filthy water that sat still and rancid, near boiling in stagnant pools and puddles filled with the runoff from human waste and animal offal.  With no other access or recourse to water, most of Europe’s peasants were forced to drink from puddles such as these in a frantic and desperate effort to stave off thirst in the midst of the unending triple digit heatwave.

With the drought and heat continuing month after month another specter of death set in: famine.

As climatological scientist Dr. Oliver Wetter from the University of Bern in Switzerland has observed in a recent study comparing the Megadrought and Heatwave of 1540 with more recent European heatwaves such as that of 2003, “There was not enough water in most rivers, so people couldn’t grind their grain anymore.  Grain and bread prices rose and poorer people couldn’t afford to obtain basic food anymore.”

In early modern, and late medieval Europe, there were only three types of power: manpower, beast power and water power.  Without water there was, essentially, nothing to make the economy run.

But if disease, famine or heat exhaustion didn’t kill you during the European Megadrought and Great Heatwave of 1540, there was still yet one more prominent way for you to die: violence.

Protestants blamed Catholics and Catholics blamed Protestants for the wildfires; for the drought and for the never ending heat.  Violence between both was endemic with religious sentiment running at a fever pitch due to the upheaval of the Reformation and people’s tempers and nerves frayed, to say the least, from the extreme and unending heat.

The Megadrought and Great Heat Wave started in the late autumn of 1539.  In that year, beginning in October  in the south of Spain and Italy, there was no rain at all and normally abundant grain harvests withered and died in the dryness and heat.

As the drought continued and the heat stayed in place like a curse from the devil, people turned inwards and sought salvation from God.

By the start of the new year of 1540, as the oppressive heat and drought spread northward and to the east and west, long lines of supplicants began to appear in Europe’s major cities, walking through urban centers in lock-step prayerful processions and imploring the populace to turn away from sin and seek God’s salvation to end the drought and stifling heat before it was too late.

To this day, based on firsthand reports mostly in diaries and chronicles, and based upon the scientific data namely that in the field of dendrochronology, the study of tree ring data, and groundwater observations, the year of 1540 in Europe remains the hottest ever on record.

Recently, there have been many climatological academic studies that have compared the megadrought and heatwave of 1540 with more recent European heatwaves and droughts.  It is believed that during the Megadrought and Heatwave of 1540 high daily temperatures for the entire year were anywhere between 5 and 7 degrees warmer than on average, when compared with the more recent 2003 European heatwave when daily high temperatures were, on average 2 to 3 degrees above normal for July and August, the year 1540 still remains, by far, the hottest ever on record.

An influential site that records historical weather data (weatherweb.net) notes in reference to the years 1540 and 1541 that, “[T]hese years were particularly dry,” and that, “In both these years, the Thames was so low that seawater extended above London Bridge even at ebb tide.”

Essentially, the temperature was so high and there was so little rain that even the River Thames in London almost dried up for two years!

So how did this happen?  How did such a calamitous megadrought and heatwave ever befall the normally temperate regions of western Europe and leave people literally praying to and begging God for rain?

Well, surprisingly, it isn’t known exactly how or why the Megadrought and Great Heatwave of 1540 occurred when it did.  Particularly perplexing is the fact that such an anomalous weather event occurred in the sixteenth century, at a time when Europe for the most part, was still considered a pre-industrial society.

However, with both historians and scientists alike now giving extra attention to the effect of weather and climate change on the course of human history, one theory about the cause of the Megadrought and Heatwave of 1540 has risen to prominence.

16th Century View of London Bridge

This theory, in layman's terms since I am by no means expert or knowledgeable enough to even discuss, let alone fully understand the complex science behind it all, is that sometime in the year 1539, a rare collision in the jetstream occurred that caused hot and dry air to hang in place over Europe, thus blocking the cooler and wetter weather systems that normally form over the Atlantic Ocean throughout the year from passing over the European continent as they typically do.  It is believed that an event such as what caused the Megadrought and Heatwave of 1540 takes place over Europe about once every one thousand years.

So that, though the heat this year has been oppressive, especially so in western Europe, chances are that it won’t rival what happened nearly five-hundred years ago during the European Megadrought and Great Heatwave of 1540.  Today, though we run the risk of irrevocably damaging our own climate to the point where it can no longer be salvaged in our decidedly pollution filled post-industrial society, at least for the time being we can look back to the past and say with confidence that it could always be worse--it could be the year 1540 and we could literally be begging God for rain.