Dear reader
We practised the apocalypse this week. No doubt you have heard of Britain's trial run with the Yellow sky of Doom.
I don't know about you but when my kids were young, and I too, we drew the sun yellow. Children in Africa often draw it red. I didn't understand why until 6 years ago when we were in Tenerife and we experienced Saharan sand in a wind storm. The sky turned an eerie yellow and the sun appeared bright red. This had been a one off experience for us. Until this week.
That very same eery yellow sky and red sun befell us in England. It was like a partial eclipse. Birds flocked to roost and office workers abandoned tasks to take pictures. It was unexpected. People admired the 3 pm sunset at the same time as being hastag 'scared $%%^less' as one of my friends put on facebook. We hadn't got a memo saying the apocalypse is nigh, nor that the trail run of Armageddon was happening that day. The weather forecasters hadn't warned of yellow sky from the west or a front of red sun causing human disturbance.
The phenomenon was widespread. My family working in other counties, my friends in other parts of Britain were seeing the same phenomenon. It lasted a good 4 hours.
So how did I experience the event? It was a warm day.
12.30 - 1.30 I had gone out of the office at lunchtime. The wind was strong and warm, the sort of warm wind you get closer to the equator but not in England. The sky was normal.
1.30-2.30 I returned to the office and got down to spreadsheet endeavours.
2.30 a colleague started mumbling of yellow things. I handed him sticky notes but he pointed at the window. The sky had a yellow tinge in the distance.
2.35 By the 5 minutes the yellow cloud moved closer to us. As it got nearer it also got darker. Birds started flocking to roost.
2.45 Colleagues stopped work and looked, and talked.
2.50 Amy worried about her washing she had left out on the line.
2.55 Nancy rang her husband, who was in London in an office and who said his colleagues were all at the window taking photos. This clearly was not just Woking. This was widespread.
3,00 I rang Mr Him. He said the sky where he worked was yellow and tasted funny. I looked at the BBC website. This sky was all over Britain!
5.00 By the time I left the office at 5 the sun was red. Bright red.
Here are some links for you to see how we did with the draft Apocolypse.
Nasty. And reminiscent of the skies we see here in fires. The air tastes bad then too.
ReplyDeleteI heard about this!
ReplyDeleteIt was spooky. I was visiting my mum in hospital at the time and all the nurses were rushing to the window to look at it. We had to put the lights on at 3pm as it got so dark. There was much talk of Armageddon and End of the the World. When I left the hospital, people were out in the car park taking photos.
ReplyDeleteWow, pretty scary! Glad you're all okay. My Rare One experienced a tornado once and she said the sky turned green before it touched down. Made me wonder if that's why Frank L. Baum chose green for the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.
ReplyDelete