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Daytime Darkness Events (New England 'Dark Day', etc.)

Jerry_B

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One of these puzzling events took place where I live at the moment (Wimbledon) in 1910. I was wondering what people's pet theories are for this sort of occurance? Have any occured recently?
 
I'm not famililar with the phenomena, how about some background info? Sounds like it could be connected with atmospheric dust (volcanoes, sandstorms, very large forest fires, etc) blocking out sunlight. Since from your description it sounds like a localised (i.e not global) event then it doesn't sound like it has a cosmic cause - i.e. not space related.
 
Well, there weren't any eclipses visible in London that year!
 
Okay, the basic thing about these events is that there will be a unexpected period of darkness during the daytime. As far as I know there are no associated falls of ash, dust, etc. that you might expect with dust storm or volcanic activity, and the longest period of darkness that I've come across so far is half and hour (Louisville, Kentucky, 7th March 1911). In general, AFAIK they are quite long-duration events. I have actually seen a photo from either the '50s or '60s of such an event, but at the moment can't remember where.

I was wondering why, if one assumes that this was something related to clouds of dust, ash, or whatever that the darkness doesn't seem to travel across to another locale? Other areas of London, AFAIK, did not report simlar events to that at Wimbledon before or after the event.

Anyway, this thing cropped up as an 'I wonder...' as I'm in the process of compiling an on-line Fortean timeline from 1900 onwards at the mo'. Still early days yet tho' ;)
 
And why would a cloud caused by a meteoric explosion hang over just one part of London ;) ? Believe me, I've rifled though the ol' brainbox to try and come up with a theory.
 
2 questions:

How dark is 'dark'?

and

Any idea of the weather conditions at the time of these events?

I'm sure we've all experienced gloomy, overcast days that became 'dark' for a while - presumably as some thicker cloud, unseen through the overcast, passed overhead. But if we're talking suddenly 'midnight' dark on a cloudless day, then.... erm... it would be something else, then, I suppose.... :)
 
Dark in this case is pitch darkness, i.e. nighttime levels. In the case cited below (Louisville), the event caused widespread panic, which I don't think would happen if the sky became really overcast ;)
 
I've always been doubtful about the forest fire theory. It takes a lot of thick smoke (like from the Kuwaiti oil fires) to completely block out the sun. Smoke from forest fires usually just looks looks like a haze, with the sun dim but still visible. Last month the Toronto area was blanketed by smoke from large fires in Quebec, but it just looked foggy, not dark.

The same with dust, you'd need a huge quantity. I recall a picture (from Mt. St. Helens I think) where it was dark in the daytime - but people were cleaning the dust off their cars with snow shovels.

So that leaves...what? An eclipse caused by some unknown body passing between the Earth and the Sun? But since these events occurred in modern times, surely such an object would have been spotted by observatories.

:confused:
 
You probably know this already, but there are some good reports of dark days in William Corliss' 'Handbook' series of anomolies. I think I have the book- I can't remember which one it is right now.
 
I still want to get all of those books, as well as Eberhart's 'A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies'. Be useful for my timeline thing. The only thing is, the latter is $345!!!!
 
Ah, I was thinking of the Sourcebook series - but thanks for the link :)
 
naitaka - I agree with your thoughts on this. If all of London was hit by this daytime darkness one would've thought that it would be a main feature in Fortean literature because of the scale of the event. But, as far as I can make out, this event only happened over one small part of London itself.

I'm beginning to think that this is some sort of error, as I can't find anything more on this event elsewhere. There is a small locally made book on my neck of the London woods that deals with the 'weird' aspects of the place's history. It makes no mention of this event. Wimbledon just seems to have a few ghosts, and that's it.

On the other hand, this doesn't exclude instances where daytime darkness has been reported elsewhere, but no mention has been made of obvious trigger events or after effects (i.e. volcanic ash, sand, dust or whatever). So I'm still none the wiser ;) Incidentally, Louisville was also the centre for one sighting of an odd winged humanoid seen by several witness as it perched in a pecan tree...
 
Daytime Darkness

jerryb mentioned something about daytime darkness.

jerryb, where can i find some info on this?

i want to know when and where it has happened.

has anyone got anything for me to check out?
 
There seems to be scant amount of info on this type of phenomena. AFAIK, it's happened in various places - Wimbledon (UK), twice at Louisville (Kentucky, USA) and a few other locales. I seem to recall a photo allegedly showing one occurance - I think this might have been in the ol' Reader's Digest book on strange phenomena.
 
I can remember such an occurrence. It would have been some time during an afternoon in June or July 1968. I was at school at the time and can remember the day growing darker and darker. In those days I don't suppose there was a facility for street lights to come on automatically, so it was even darker than night time.

I can't really remember how long this lasted - maybe an hour - but then there was a really heavy hailstorm with quite large hailstones about 1 cm in diameter, and the sky eventually lightened.

I remember reading in the paper afterwards that there had been a cloud cover about 5 miles thick which had caused this darkness.

Carole
 
great!

we were 'darkened' by a dust storm in australia when i was in primary school.

it was kind of a dusky red darkness though.
 
Ah, but the ones we're interested are apparently more like night-time conditions. They also don't seem to be associated with any volcanic activity (i.e. either there are no such sources nearby, nor are there subsequent falls of ash, etc.).
 
yeah, that's what i thought.

not like there is something in between the sun and the earth in the atmosphere....and not an eclipse...and localised!
 
i've been googling....and the number of times i have gotten all excited by the text...only to see the site is your timeline!
 
Obviously something extremely large, passed between the sun and the earth, and the shadow fell over this particular spot on earth. the big Q of course is, what was it. ?
 
When day turns to night

Noon turns to night as cloud blacks out sun

(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-11-12 08:57


Day turned to night across Shenyang when a freak cloud formation 8,000 metres deep blanketed the northeastern city.

For over half-an-hour noon was as black as midnight. Cars, buses and lorries went someway to breaking up the darkness.

Tremendous lightening flashes accompanied the phenomena, reports the website http://www.sina.com.cn.

Convergence of two cloud fronts formed the 8,000-metre-thick connective cloud cluster.

With sky and sun effectively blocked out, visibility was reduced to near zero, according to an expert from the provincial capital's meteorological bureau.

The marvellous spectacle was also reported in many other areas of Liaoning Province and lasted for half an hour in some places, he said.

The meteorologist warned that temperatures are likely to plummet in the coming days.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/12/content_390884.htm
 
Interesting! In this recent case, it seems it affected a whole city (which has happened before elsewhere). That said, AFAIK at other times no weather effects (i.e. lightning) had been reported. The daytime darkness event in Wimbledon is more odd, as it only affected that particular part of London. So this sort of thing may explain events, but not others (or so it seems).
 
An Irish chap I used to work with told me about a 'Daytime Darkness' event which occurred in London (I think) in the '50s. He told me it literally went as dark as night. Apparently people who had never been to church in their life started kneeling down and praying! It must have been very scary.
Does anyone remember the one in London in 1985? It got very dark, and all the street lights came on. The talk was that a nuclear war had started. There was a torrential downpour, and then it slowly brightened up. Phew!

Bill Robinson
 
Big Bill Robins said:
An Irish chap I used to work with told me about a 'Daytime Darkness' event which occurred in London (I think) in the '50s. He told me it literally went as dark as night.

Sounds like smog. The worst smog event was in 1952, if I remember what my parents told me correctly.
 
There was an amazing "dark" event in Glasgow a few years ago. Would have been 1996 or so. It didn't go QUITE as dark as night but it did go from a bright sunny day to an incredibly dark thick cloud and it was very dark. There was a massive crack of lightning, torrential hail and then it stopped and the cloud vanished and it became a sunny day again. This was all literally in the space of 5 minutes or so. Amazing. Must have been terrifying for the God-fearing!:eek:
 
early eclipse? may 1902

on 7th a strange phenomenon was oserved:-

darkness started to fall at 4pm, and street lighting had to be turned on. at a bampton cricket match, players lost sight of the ball. a solar eclipse had been forecast for midnight, but it is not known if this was the reason for the occurence


(taken from "edwardian witney 1901-10" by charles & joan gott)
 
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