Circa A.D. 430

For AD 430, the best texts outside the Maya land are Roman: Greek or Latin. Armenia was still under Sasanian domination and, let's be blunt here, all the Near-Oriental records are godawful for Late Antiquity. I don't rate the Coptic or Syriac tradition as good yet, either.

As for China, I have had no training, so must go to Wikipedia. China was under those Northern and Southern dynasties: Northern Wei and Liu Song respectively. Southern China remembers fondly Emperor Wen's "Reign of Yuanjia". Maybe the Book of Wei has otherwise to say of the north. But AD 430 doesn't look like a bad year.

I do consider myself a scholar of Greek Late Antiquity. A close account of that era is Socrates Scholasticus, a Novatian historian. And his history has been translated to English - for free, even! I am looking at chapters 30-39, mainly.

Philip of Side might be closer still. But (a) Socrates ch. 27 despises him and (b) his implied terminus is AD 426, certainly too early. Anyway Philip's history is lost, for its own sake (some intermediaries preserved what he'd reported from Papias).

For Socrates, the main religious movements were the conversions of the Burgundian pagans and of the Cretan Jews. The singular religious event was that first Ephesian synod: his own Novatianism was not a doctrinal heresy but a practical schism. To this end Socrates relates the early career of Nestorius as pope in Constantinople. Socrates deems Nestorius as orthodox-enough, but a failure as a politician - about right. Socrates doesn't care who the Bishop of Rome was. And why would he; Theodosius II had recently imposed his cousin upon Rome as "Western Emperor".

Socrates was not a Syrian monk living close to the land, so doesn't tell us much about weather events. We do learn that Thrace was cold. We don't learn that Thrace was abnormally cold. There was also a fire in Constantinople, which spared the Novatian cathedral.

The next step, for those interested, is to rummage apocalyptic texts and saints' lives.