Remember when the day turned red, with a red hurricane sun? It was 16 October 2017 when everything went weird.
Ex hurricane Ophelia brought very strong winds to western UK and Ireland. And, coincidentally, it was the exact 30th anniversary of the Great Storm of 16 October 1987.
In some areas the street lights were put on in the middle of the day as the dust blocked out some of the sun.
The photo above was taken at lunchtime. It looks like a sunset! This short video clip is made with some footage from the archives –
When the day turned red – why did it happen?
Hurricane Ophelia originated in the Azores and as it moved northwards it pulled in tropical air from the Sahara.
The red sun is likely to have been caused by a combination of this Saharan dust and smoke from Portuguese wild-fires. They’ve been drawn north by the warm southerly airflow.
The wild forest fires at the time across central Portugal and Spain killed at least nine people and filled the sky with ash and smoke.
The dust from the Sahara is dragged high up into the atmosphere, travelling over the UK.
Because it’s so high, the dust reflects and refracts longer wavelengths of sunlight towards the red part of the spectrum, which gives a red appearance to the sky.
And the Clean Up…
All of this dust, just hanging about in the air, had to come down to earth at sometime! We were left in no doubt that it was real dust from the Sahara desert. Everything was covered in a layer of red dust for a few days afterwards…
While you’re here…
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