An unexpected happening in Zhoushan, a city in China, over the weekend has left the netizens flabbergasted. A cold shiver went down their spines when on Saturday, May 7, the Chinese watched the crimson-red skies all over their homes, offices, and buildings. It left them in a state of shock and fear as if it was once in a blue moon occurrence. The videos circulated all over social media with 150 million views on the Chinese social media sites named Sina and Weibo. Further investigations into this startling episode revealed that the sky was reddest near the port areas. When Global Times reported this whole incident, one of the users said, “I have never seen anything like this before. It really amazes me that the sky can even turn red.” People were scared out of their wits until it was reported that there was nothing to worry about as the meteorological bureau had described the reason behind this happening.
The Chinese were calling it a bad omen for themselves, but the local meteorological bureau of Zhoushan said that refraction and scattering of light were the reasons behind these red skies. The bureau elucidated, “When weather conditions are good, more water in the atmosphere forms aerosols which refract and scatter the light of fishing boats and create the red sky seen by the public.” Similarly, the Global Times reported that “if the weather conditions are “good” and there is more water in the atmosphere, it leads to the formation of aerosols. These aerosols then refract and scatter the light of fishing boats and result in the sky turning red”.
However, some Twitter users wrote,
On the other hand, many people confused it with the happening of a similar kind in 1770, when the skies turned red due to some anomalies in the solar activity and geomagnetic behavior of the earth. But the experts have totally discarded these claims because no evidence was found of this nature in the recent happenings. The experts said that the two events are absolutely independent of each other. This is only caused due to the refraction of light, and there is no need to panic.
