What Does It Mean When The Sky Turns Green? - WSLS

Happy Monday and welcome to another edition of the Beyond The Forecast newsletter!

Social media was buzzing last week when a derecho in the Upper Midwest caused the sky to turn a green hue near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Eerie looking!

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Why did this occur? Well, it’s all about what time of day the storm happened and what size hail it was producing.

Here are the hail reports from South Dakota and Nebraska from July 5th. Golf to softball-sized hail was reported!

You can also measure the size of the hail by diameter. Golf ball hail is about 1.75″ across, while softball-sized hail is 4″.

You can tell the hail was quite large!

The storm happened later in the day when the sky usually starts to take a reddish hue for the sunset.

The red light was scattered by the large hail in the thunderstorm clouds, causing a green sky.

Theoretically, it would be possible for us to see this phenomenon in Virginia. It would require the precise timing of a large hail-producing thunderstorm close to sunset. How cool would that be?!

Switching gears to your forecast, it is feeling SO nice outside as we’re getting the work week started. Meteorologist Chris Michaels is tracking when summer heat and storms return in our daily forecast article.

You can always get specific forecast details for your zone, whether it’s the Roanoke Valley, Southside, the Highlands or elsewhere around Southwest and Central Virginia, anytime at WSLS.com/weather. Know your zone!

In case you missed it, we’re posting great weather and science content on WSLS.com. Here are a few links from the past week to check out:

• China sees record rains, heat as weather turns volatile
• CONFIRMED: Our area’s fifth tornado of the year confirmed in Grayson County
• Biden to reveal first image from NASA’s new space telescope

If you prefer your weather information delivered by social media, you can follow Your Local Weather Authority on Facebook and Twitter.

You can also keep up with me on social media. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, follow along!

-- Justin McKee

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