A Beautiful Morning Sky

Linking up with Chrisy at Living a Good North Coast Life for Reconnecting with Nature, one photograph at a time.

As I sat drinking my coffee this morning, I looked out the window and saw a beautiful pink sky behind our oak tree.  Because of the elevation of our back yard and the fact that I was pretty far away from the window, I could only see a small portion of the sky.  When I actually looked out the window, this is what I saw.  Usually the entire sky is pink, but this morning there were just these streaks of pink in an otherwise blue sky.  We've had a lot of rain and storms lately - and obviously more on the way - that this was a welcomed change.

It's beautiful isn't it.

It reminded me of that old saying:
Red sky in morning, sailors take warning
Red sky at night, sailors delight

And then I thought, what does that even mean.  So, thanks to "the google" I was able to find out the scientific explanation (broken down into terms I can actually understand.  Keeping in mind that here in the US, our prevailing winds are west to east - here is the reason:

The reddish glow of the morning or evening sky is caused by haze or clouds related to storms in the region.  If the morning skies are red, it is because clear skies over the horizon to the east permit the sun to light the undersides of moisture-bearing clouds. The saying assumes that more such clouds are coming in from the west. Conversely, in order to see red clouds in the evening, sunlight must have a clear path from the west, and therefore the prevailing westerly wind must be bringing clear skies.

There are occasions where a storm system might rain itself out before reaching the observer (who had seen the morning red sky). For ships at sea however, the wind and rough seas from an approaching storm system could still be a problem, even without rainfall.

So it does make scientific sense, and still gives us a beautiful sunrise, if only for the few minutes that it was out there.