Weather rambling — Devastating rose bugs in 1890

June 1890 opened with ideal weather.

“’Simply delightful,’ is the right way to characterize the weather that prevailed Saturday and yesterday,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on June 2.

It did not last.

“We were visited Wednesday night (June 4) by one of the severest thunderstorms ever known in this vicinity,” the Chestertown correspondent reported in The Morning Star on June 6. “Lightening struck a telegraph pole in front of George W. Mead’s residence and tore it all to slivers.”

The weather briefly gave a sample of the Dog Days of August.

It was 90 degrees in the shade, and with humidity seemed even hotter, at Glens Falls the afternoon of June 5.

“The heat came in with a rush early in the morning, and by noon it had beat not only this year’s record, but all records for years past at this time in June,” The Morning Star reported the next day. “Old Humidity came along with Old Sol, and together they made the greater part of the day thoroughly uncomfortable for poor, perspiring humanity.”

Heat and humidity continued for a few days.

“No rain fell in the village Saturday. Yesterday was another dry day,” The Morning Star reported on June 9. “If this continues for a few days longer, growing crops may escape drowning out, and mankind will have occasion for rejoicing.”

“Farmers are taking advantage of this spell of weather to push their work in hoeing. Some are planting and some are still plowing for corn,” The Granville Sentinel reported on June 13.

“As far as can be predicted from present appearances, there will be an abundant crop of apples this year,” the Sentinel reported. “If the crop turns out as it promises now, the fifty-year-old tradition among agriculturalists that the apple crop is always more abundant in even years, will be more than sustained.”

The dry spell was short.

“The rainstorm Friday night was the heaviest ever known here,” the East Lake George correspondent to The Morning Star reported on June 12.

“Fort Ann was visited with a severe wind and rainstorm last evening. No serious damage was done.”

On June 13, The Morning Star reported: “Friday’s rain showed the need of a new roof on (Queensbury) Bay Road Church.”

Crops were considerably damaged by wind and rainstorms, The Fort Ann Correspondent reported in The Morning Star on June 14.

Hot weather was the norm for the next few days.

“The mercury in the thermometer went down a notch or two yesterday, and a cooling breeze was all that saved us from a foretaste of mid-summer weather,” The Morning Star reported on June 18.

“The heaviest shower of the season set in at three o’clock yesterday afternoon, and lasted about ten minutes. An hour afterward there was another downpour of about same duration. The rain fell in torrents,” The Morning Star reported on June 24. “In some sections of the town, ponds have formed that will remain for weeks as reminders of the fact that this is practically a sewer-less town.”

Summer set in with gusto.

“Very hot weather prevails here,” the Bolton Landing correspondent wrote on June 24, in a report published June 27 in The Morning Star.

“That was a genuine summer yesterday. It promoted perspiration and a brisk trade in straw hats and dusters,” The Morning Star reported on June 25.

“Hot, dry and dusty,” The Riparius correspondent reported in The Morning Star on June 27. “City people are fast making their appearance en route to our popular summer resort.”

Weather was not the only factor in the agricultural season.

“The rose bugs are destroying the fields of corn, and the rust is making a poor crop of oats,” The Morning Star reported on June 27.

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