spOOky nOOn

[Howard Brown]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/16/strange-red-sun-phenomenon-seen-across-england-caused-hurricane/

I saw the sun today first with a red ring around it, then totally red; the light went all yellowish. The lights came on in the supermarket car park at midday.

[George Preoteasa]

I was going to say, with Ophelia passing by, you should see some not so common sky conditions. Are you? I mean in person.

[Laurence Green]

Hygge

I am glad for your posting.

The following will be of added interest to the phenomenon we witnessed yesterday.

Photos are shewn below in the following links.

BBC News Weather Watchers:-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weatherwatchers/article/41636530/storm-ophelia-turns-the-sun-red

 

BBC News – Scotland:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-41640056

I am 64 years old and have been a cloud watcher since the tender age of 5.  I have seen some pretty weird cloud conditions but nothing like what happened yesterday.  It was weird and certainly spooky.

I have never seen a sun taking on the colours of a sunset at 10 am.  Also, the lighting was so dim – a lurid brown / gold / orange hue.  I had to put the lighting on – it was just so dim.

The phenomena was caused by the tail end of hurricane Ophelia, dust from the Sahara, forest fires from Portugal and Spain.  My window sills are covered in brown “soot”.  Lots of cleaning to do, but well worth the “pageant” we were able to view.

Laurence

[Howard Brown]

Laurence, the last Weather Watcher ‘treehacker’ captured the red sun I saw very well. Thanks for that.

[Hans Stocker]

A rare and spectacular phenomenon for sure. The same occurred in the Netherlands. Today (Tuesday)  the sun was sometimes visible in reds and yellows and sometimes invisible behind layers of smoke. As a result the temperature dropped some degrees. It is amazing that the smoke of the fires in Spain and Portugal together with the sands of the Sahara reach so far and wide in the slipstream of Ophelia.

[Hans Stocker]

At the end of the day the sun became better visible. What strikes me in next picture taken at 16:00 is the strange colored corona (yellow with a red band). I assume this is the effect of the sands of the Sahara.

 

[Laurence Green]

 

Thanks, Hans, for the additional information and photos – very interesting stuff.  Your observational comments fully match my own thoughts about that which happened yesterday.

Several of my friends in Switzerland reported the same to me today (17 October) of that which they saw yesterday.  As one said, the sun took on the appearance of a full Moon in total eclipse and at perigee.

Remarkable!

Laurence

 

[George Preoteasa]

Hans, your last picture is very interesting. Maybe it was an actual corona caused by clouds and filtered through the sand/smoke in the air.

I also wanted to make another observation. It is quite common for Saharan sand to be picked up in storms and carried west. It is found in abundance at the bottom of the Atlantic. Sometimes it can be found in Florida, according to a meteorologist who lives there and claims he finds it on his car windshield,

So I tried to see how the air flow was at the time of your observations using ventusky.com. This is at 3000m, it is somewhat different at sea level. You can see the currents over Spain and Portugal, but there is no evident source from Sahara. The air would need time to travel these distances, but even going back a day or two, does not show a major flow from Sahara. So it may be that there was more smoke than sand or the Saharan sand traveled far out in the ocean before being picked up by Ophelia.

Anyway, this is a once or twice in a lifetime event, you are lucky.

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=45.3;-1.1;3&l=temperature-700hpa&t=20171016/12

[Howard Brown]

Yes, I see your point, George, about the (widely quoted) Sahara; more Iberian forest fires. Thank you.

[Howard Brown]

Come to think of it, I have had my car covered in (possibly Saharan) dust in the past, but not this time (but it did not spend that long outside its garage).

[Hans Stocker]

Thank you George for trying to find out more about the Sahara sand. Today the Cloud a Day pays attention to the phenomenon. It explains that the Sahara sand and the smoke were drawn up by the winds encircling Ophelia.

And you are quite right, this is a once or twice in a lifetime event. The dutch weatherman stated this was unprecedented in his already long meteorological career.

[Howard Brown]

I forgot to say that my local starlings were flying around at midday in a flock as if it were a duskular (thanks to Andrew Kirk for that word) murmuration.

Paul Simons, Weather Eye, The Times, UK wrote two Ophelia-related columns, Sat 14OCT2017 and Tues 17OCT2017 (don’t ask me about Mon). Something I have not seen elsewhere was his claim that ‘Ophelia had taken on a new lease of life, dragged along by a vigorous jet stream.’ ‘As it skirted round the Azores islands it unexpectedly exploded into a category 3 hurricane…. It is extremely rare for this to happen – in data going back to 1851, no other major hurricane is known to have formed anywhere close to as far northeast as Ophelia’.

[Laurence Green]

This is a most interesting thread.  Many thanks to all those who have contributed observations and useful comment.

Sahara dust – well, all my windows sills and small conservatory roof are covered in pink sand-like dust.  Annoyed because only a week ago I cleaned the whole lot and now have to do the cleaning all over again,  The “silt”, if I can call it that, is abrasive like sand granule.  My neighbours cars have taken on a weird pinkish hue.

As others have said, this is a remarkable event.  I’ll not forget it.  It is, to me, on a par with a total solar eclipse.  The thing I remember most -seeing a red sun in the morning (10.00 hrs GMT) and the dark subdued lurid gold / ochre yellow sky.

Laurence

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