shepherd’s warning

You’re probably familiar with the old nautical proverb:

  Red sky at night,
  Sailor’s delight.
  Red sky at morning,
  Sailor’s warning.

However, I come from a part of England where wool was a major part of the local economy for hundreds of years, until a rapacious king, Henry VIII, confiscated the accumulated wealth of the mediæval monasteries, including Furness Abbey, which had been responsible for introducing sheep onto the fells of the Lake District in the first place (fell derives from the Old Norse word for ‘mountain’—all the local words for topographic features derive from Old Norse). Nevertheless, sheep (and shepherds) remain a fixture on the fells, and locally the familiar wisdom attributed elsewhere to sailors I automatically assign to shepherds.

The purpose of this digression is to serve as an introduction to what I saw this morning. I always enjoy my morning coffee sitting on the roof of our house, where I can listen to the cacophony of the dawn chorus (mostly crested mynahs), but I’d no sooner put my coffee down than I had to rush back downstairs to get my phone. Here’s why:

I took both these photos at 6.10am, and the next two at 6.20am:

…with this one just a minute later:

I took the next two photos at 6.28am to illustrate how far across the sky the colour had spread. This was the view looking southwest:

…and this is what it looked like to the northwest:

I took my final photo at 6.30am, when the display had reached maximum intensity:

Notice what appeared to be a perfectly circular yellow curve (it was much more obvious in reality).

And as for the dire warning that is enshrined in the Cumbrian shepherd’s message? It’s been sunny all day!