Talk:New England's Dark Day

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There are forest fires and thick fogs all the time, why isn't there a record of something like this occuring in other places and other times.

[edit] Other dark days... and evidence that the New England Dark Day was probably not a paranormal event.

There are such examples, and they are easily found on the Web.

For examples, all of which can be explained by either smoke, heavy cloud cover, dust (volcanic or otherwise) or a combination of these factors: http://web.archive.org/web/20020805025018/http://www.phenomena.org.uk/DarkDaysWeb.htm

I also managed to turn up these words, from Page 193 of the book "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society":

A man who was on the river observed a dark scum like soot on the surface of the water. Several of our neighbors catched rain water (for there was a drizzling rain all the day at times) and it was so black they would not use it for washing.

When this bit of information is considered, it seems to fly in the face of the popular interpretation (embraced by the article) that the Dark Day was an omen from God. Instead, there is a pretty convincing case that thick smoke under thick cloud cover accounts for the Darkness. The claim that the smoke and cloud cover explanation is mere "speculation" should be removed, also.

Since Wikipedia prefers second-hand, rather than first-hand accounts, this Web page uses the same book as its source (but does not provide a citation... the reference was inferred from quoted text found within the Web page): http://www.weathernotebook.org/transcripts/2002/10/03.php

There is also a better-than-Wikipedia's analysis of the event here: http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/arc2004/alm04may.htm

This article should be removed from WikiProject Paranormal, as it is already at home in WikiProject Meteorology and Weather Events.

216.215.128.19 09:52, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Excellent work - please feel free to make the edits you suggest Gillyweed 10:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The edits are done. The information was so voluminous that it has overwhelmed the original article, most of which has been relegated to a new section entitled "Religious Interpretations," which was then expanded to include the fact that modern religion remains in awe of the event. New sources have been discovered and were used. I don't know how to edit the article's categorization, so it remains a part of WikiProject Paranormal. 216.215.128.105 20:58, 15 August 2007 (UTC)