The population of the Ming Dynasty dropped by half due to cold. How cold was the winter 300 years ago?

1. In areas with warm climates such as Guangdong and Jiangnan, there is heavy snowfall in winter

According to the "Guangdong General Chronicle", in the forty-sixth year of Wanli, heavy snow began to fall in most areas of Guangdong. Not only did it rain non-stop day and night, but the snow flakes were like goose feathers. This kind of weather made the local elderly people very frightened. They had never seen such a scene before. This was not the most terrifying thing. The most terrifying thing was that from that year on, Guangdong would usher in a competition almost every winter. A big blizzard.

In the winter of December, the forty-sixth year of Emperor Wanli's reign, it snowed in Guangdong and was very cold. During the day, the snow fell like pearls, and the next day it fell like goose feathers... The elders were afraid of speaking, which had never happened before. This is true every year. "Guangdong General Chronicle"

You must know that Guangdong belongs to a subtropical monsoon climate area. The temperature here generally remains between 9℃ and 24℃ all year round. It is not an exaggeration to describe it as warm and humid, but in Before and after Chongzhen ascended the throne, there were heavy snowfalls and even blizzards here year after year, which is enough to show how cold it was at that time. Extremely cold weather also occurred not only in Guangdong, but also in the Jiangnan region. According to the "History of the Ming Dynasty: Five Elements Chronicles", in 1454 AD, it snowed heavily for more than 40 days in many places in the south of the Yangtze River, so much so that Suzhou and Changzhou froze to death from starvation. The dead were countless. 2. Inland lakes were frozen, and the northern section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was frozen for several months.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, there was a scholar named Tan Qian who wrote a book called "Travel to the North". In the book, he described the disasters caused by the severe cold weather at that time based on his personal experiences.

He once set off from his hometown of Hangzhou to the capital. The transportation was a boat on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. When he set off, it was early July in the Gregorian calendar and he arrived in the capital on November 17th. And on November 18, the day after he arrived, the northern section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal began to freeze.

According to modern meteorological conditions, in November of the Gregorian calendar, at least inland, rivers rarely freeze over, and it will not gradually freeze until at least mid-to-late December. But at that time, In mid-November, the cold caused the river to freeze. Not only that, according to Tan Qian's records, the freezing period of the North Canal was also much longer than before, reaching about 110 days. This shows that the climate at that time had reached a very cold level.

In addition, according to records in "Jiangnan Tongzhi", inland lakes such as Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake, Taihu Lake, etc., have had ice layers on the rivers several feet thick for several consecutive years. The most important thing is that this is not an accidental phenomenon. At that time, it happened almost every year. Including the Guangdong area mentioned earlier, in the last years of Wanli, heavy snow fell for five or six days in a row, and the valleys were sealed by ice and snow. This was an unheard of thing since the founding of the Ming Dynasty.

In Jiangnan at that time, the ice on the river was frozen from Wujiang to Jiaxing. In order to be able to travel, people had to find strong men to use tools to cut the ice. Even so, the ships could move forward 3-3 times a day. 4 kilometers, which shows how thick the ice is.