On Tuesday morning (13th), residents of Dallas, Texas, USA reported a phenomenon that left the sky a pinkish hue in the morning. The backlash came when a Reddit user shared a photo of the bright sky in shades of pink.
The post which achieved more than 12,000 positive reactions echoed the question of what that meant. “It’s not a filter, is the Dallas sky pink today???? I’ve lived here for not even a year, what does that mean? user u/s0c-Magget wrote in the post.
Why is the sky blue?
We normally see white clouds because they scatter all wavelengths of light. While the blue of the sky is due to the gases present in the atmosphere, which refract better the short wavelengths of visible light falling from above.
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The orange and pink sky
At dawn and dusk, light begins to focus laterally, forcing more gases through. So the light has to travel a longer path, interacting with more particles in the atmosphere which allow longer light waves, such as red, to be refraction.
While strange, pink skies are a phenomenon that can also indicate that rain is coming. This idea has been around for a long time and is even present in the Christian Bible.
“Red skies at dusk, good weather tomorrow; red gloomy sky early in the morning, bad weather all day’
Matthew 16:2-3 Christian Bible
And there is also a scientific basis that can confirm the idea explained by the movement of the sun and rain cells. Storms generally move from west to east, while the sun moves in the opposite direction. In this way the rain clouds at dawn and dusk will always face the Sun and thus refract the light of the longer waves.
“In the morning, the sun is in the east and the reddish light clouds will be in the west. Clouds moving from west to east would move towards the viewer. At night, the sun is in the west and illuminated reddish clouds will be in the east, moving away from the observer,” Jeffrey R. French, an assistant professor of meteorology at the University of Wyoming, said in a response to Newsweek.
And the green sky, what does that mean?
In the comments to the Reddit post, some users said that green skies indicate a tornado is coming. “I have lived here for over a decade. This [céu rosa] and green skies are a very bad sign of ideal conditions for tornadoes,” wrote user vishrit.
Green skies are not a common occurrence and occur under certain conditions when clouds are laden with water, refracting only blue-green light. “Green clouds are rare and tend to be associated with very high water or ice content in a cloud, as liquid, frozen water absorbs red light, but requires the sun to be at right angles and not obscured by others clouds,” said Steven Sherwood. , Professor of Meteorology at UNSW Sydney.
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