“Red In The Morning, Sailor Take Warning” – But Why?

On my way into work this morning while crossing Spring Street in Portland I noticed the sun rising to the east with a very red tint to the clouds and all I could think of was the old saying my mom used to tell me whenever we saw a red sky: "Red at night, sailor delight. Red in the morning, sailor take warning." It turns out that there's actually science behind the saying. 

I felt the need to do some research on this one so I turned to my good friend that has all the answers: Google. The Google (yes I call it "The Google") pointed me to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website. You probably know them better as NOAA.

Here's how they explain it:

This old saying actually has a scientific explanation. It relates to moving high and low surface-pressure weather systems, and the way that the colors in sunlight are scattered differently by dirty and clean atmospheres.

 

Picture yourself on a ship in the middle of a mid-latitude ocean. There the wind (and thus storm paths) is from west to east. It is morning and you are watching the sunrise. It is red. Since it is morning you are looking east, and the red sky indicates that there is high pressure there. Because you are in the mid-latitudes, the high is moving eastward--away from you. That could only mean that a low, and very likely an associated storm, is moving toward you from the west.  Sailor take warning! Now picture yourself watching the sunset from the ship, and the western sky is red.  That means that an area of high pressure is to your west, the westerlies are moving it toward you, and good weather is on the way--sailor's delight!

 

Makes perfect sense doesn't it? You can get more in depth with this at the NOAA website.

How does this hold up? CBS 13 meteorologist Charlie Lopresti says it's going to be partly sunny and 60 today and mostly sunny and 65 tomorrow. Not much of a storm but then again I'm no sailor.