In the north of Western Siberia there is a small peninsula - Yamal, belonging to the territory of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. In addition to rich deposits of natural gas, this sparsely populated area of land in 1938. became famous for an anomalous phenomenon, which was called "Black Day".
The day is blacker than the night
This happened on September 18, 1938. The day on Yamal began as usual - the sun had risen, the sky was cloudless. However, at 8 am the sky began to acquire a dark shade, then the color of the sky became red-brown, and two hours later the peninsula plunged into pitch darkness. The blackness that enveloped Yamal did not at all resemble twilight, according to eyewitnesses, most of all it looked like a dense dense fog. Visibility deteriorated so much that people could only orient themselves within a radius of a meter.
The case became unprecedented, since such phenomena had not previously been observed on the territory of Russia. There was no eclipse that day, and the strange "night" did not look like an eclipse. The geologists working on the island launched several signal flares. They managed to see that thick dark clouds hang low above the ground, which do not let the sunlight through.
In addition, the anomaly took place in complete radio silence - it was impossible to catch a single station on the air. Blackness covered the southern part of the peninsula and the Ob Bay. The darkened strip covered 200-250 km in width and about 600 km in length (practically the entire peninsula), in addition, it moved from west to east. Closer to 13.00, the darkness cleared away, and the strange clouds left not the slightest trace behind them. No precipitation, no dust - nothing.
What Science Says
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This phenomenon in meteorology is called "local decrease in atmospheric transparency", and it is impossible to predict when and where it will occur. In contrast to a solar eclipse, darkness during a "rainy day" is denser and covers small areas. For several centuries, this little-studied event happened on our planet only 5-6 times. The possible causes of sudden blackness, scientists ranked forest fires, dust storms and cosmic dust plumes. It was the last version that was named as the main version of the "Black Day" on Yamal, if not for one "but": no astronomical bodies were observed that day near the Earth.
As the historical documents show, similar "Black Days" and earlier happened in different parts of the globe. For example, May 19, 1780 "night" in the middle of the day came in North America. The "black canvas" covered the sky all day, and only dissipated closer to midnight. And when, finally, the darkness dispelled, the full moon was at first a crimson-red color, but gradually its color changed to normal.
Then this event was associated with wildfires raging in Canada. After 230 years, experts have studied samples of trees taken from the "rainy day" zone. As the analysis showed, coal particles and traces of resin were found on the old annual rings, which means that the trees at that time were indeed scorched by fire. Well, and the bloody color of the moon with a similar phenomenon is explained by the fact that the dust suspended in the air acts as a filter, and through the scattering clouds the moon looks red.
"Black Day" was recorded on June 2, 1802, and in the Pacific Ocean, when the crew of the schooner "Eldrado" drifted for half an hour at complete calm in impenetrable darkness in broad daylight. In 1884, sudden darkness came in England, and in 1886 and 1904 in America (Wisconsin and Memphis).
Although scientists have long been trying to give a scientific explanation for this unique and extremely rare phenomenon, putting forward certain hypotheses, they have not yet succeeded in formulating a convincing unified theory.
