may have begun already before the eruption. Such a change in the ocean currents has been described as being characteristic for the Little Ice Age and mediates numerous effects of the Little Ice Age, such as colder winters. Distant consequences North America Thin tree rings and frost rings potentially correlated to the Huaynaputina eruption have been found in trees of what today are the Northeastern and Western United States such as in Montana. Tree rings dating to 1601 and 1603 found close to the tree line in Quebec indicate cold temperatures, and anomalous tree rings and cooling in Idaho have been linked to the eruption as well. In 1601, the coldest temperature of the last 600 years was recorded in Seward Peninsula, Alaska, as well as in other places of northwestern and southeastern Alaska. Noticeable cooling has been inferred for the Western US from tree ring data. Weather in the Arctic Archipelago of Canada was unusually wet. The Huaynaputina eruption was followed by a drought in what today are the Eastern U.S. and may have hindered the establishment of the colony in Jamestown, Virginia, where mortality from malnutrition was high. The eruption may also have contributed to the disappearance of the Monongahela culture from North America, along with other climate phenomena linked to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. California A major flooding episode in 1605 ± 5 recorded from sediments of the Santa Barbara Basin has been attributed to the Huaynaputina eruption. A global cooling period associated with the Huaynaputina eruption as well as eruptions of Mount Etna and Quilotoa may have forced storm tracks and the jet stream south, causing floods in the Southwestern United States. At that time, flooding also took place in Silver Lake in the Mojave Desert, and Mono Lake rose to the highest level of the past millennium. There were also wet spells between 1599 and 1606 in the Sacramento River system, according to analysis of tree rings. Colder temperatures may have contributed to the flooding in Silver Lake, as they would have reduced evaporation. The Spanish explorers Sebastián Vizcaíno and Juan de Oñate visited the US west coast and the Colorado River Delta in the years following the Huaynaputina eruption. The effects of this eruption and the activity of other volcanoes – namely, large scale flooding – might have induced them to believe that California was an island; this later became one of the most