It is the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption from this spring that is affecting the weather. The Gulf Stream alone wouldn’t do this. It takes both of them and reduced sun activity. We have a little ice age at work here.
ping to post 11
The ash plume is the cause for this weather.
In 1783, for example, a volcanic fissure in Iceland called “Laki” violently erupted. The sulfur dioxide gases carried with its plume caused increased death rates all over Europe over the next month or two, but that was nothing compared to the meteorological effects. The winter of 1784 was one of the worst on record in both Europe and North America — the Mississippi River even froze at New Orleans!
And if you think that was bad, you should know it wasn’t nearly as significant as the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which caused the Northern Hemisphere to experience “The Year Without a Summer” in 1816. Frost was reported in Connecticut in June, famine was widespread in the U.S. and Europe, and — less importantly, but interestingly — the lousy summer caused Mary Shelley and John Polidori (and their friends) to stay indoors while on vacation, resulting in the novel Frankenstein and the short story The Vampyre.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/04/6-questions-and-answers-about-the-iceland-volcanic-ash-cloud/