Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky at morning, shepherd’s warning, first appears in the Bible in the book of Matthew. It is an old weather saying often used at sunrise and sunset to signify the changing sky and was originally known to help the shepherds prepare for the next day’s weather. Despite there being global variations in this saying such as “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in morning, sailors warning”, the scientific understanding behind such occurrences remains the same.
Why does a red sky appear at sunrise and sunset?
The saying is most reliable when weather systems predominantly come from the west as they do in Ireland. “Red sky at night, shepherds delight” can often be proven true, since red sky at night means fair weather is generally headed towards you. A red sky at sunset means high pressure is moving in from the west, so therefore the next day will usually be dry and pleasant. “Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning” means a red sky appears due to the high-pressure weather system having already moved east meaning the good weather has passed, most likely making way for a wet and windy low-pressure system. And so we come to the title of this mini-blog, Storm Bella is bearing down on us this morning and there is a yellow weather warning for the whole of Ireland. Hunker down folks.
Status Yellow – Wind warning for Ireland
Met Éireann Weather Warning, On Saturday (St Stephen’s Day), through the late afternoon, evening and night, westerly winds associated with Storm Bella (named by UK Met Office) will reach mean speeds of 50 to 65km/h with gusts of 90 to 110km/h. Gusts will be higher at times near the west coast. With the combination of strong winds, high waves and forecasted storm surge, there is a risk of coastal flooding along the west coast. “Thank you” Santa for a crisp and frosty Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but now for the bit of a blow from Storm Bella.
On a much more positive note the first delivery of almost 10,000 doses of the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is due to arrive in Ireland today (December 26th. 2020) , and not a minute too soon as there is a nasty new variant doing the rounds which has everyone concerned. The next few months will test us (Ireland may have a lock down until March 2021) but it will also open up our lives again on the journey back to some semblance of normal. I do hope the world we all usher in for 2021 will be so much better, but only we can make the difference. The quote below signifies that what we do with the tough lessons from 2020 will be hugely important for us all in 2021. We live in important times.
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