London’s sky turns red Monday, but we can’t blame pollution

DANIEL DAN SORABJI/AFP/Getty Images

Residents of England awoke on Monday morning to a sky that looked very much like a scene from the movie Blade Runner-red and hazy. Fortunately this isn't science fiction-or even pollution. Rather, it's a combination of the rare, powerful ex-hurricane Ophelia's winds and African dust.

The large, extra-tropical cyclone that brought high winds and damaging seas to Ireland on Monday also produced a huge swath of powerful southerly winds that brought Saharan dust from the West Coast of Africa all the way north across the Atlantic and Western Europe into the United Kingdom.

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