Caracas Sky Turns Red After Earthquakes, Scientists Explain Phenomenon

Days after twin earthquakes struck Venezuela, leaving thousands dead and causing widespread devastation across parts of the south American country, residents in the capital Caracas witnessed the sky turning an eerie blood red.

Videos quickly spread over social media, showing a burning crimson sky as the sun sank below the horizon, bathing the city in a red glow.

It prompted speculation that the spectacle was somehow linked to the recent seismic event – Venezuela’s worst earthquake disaster in over a century – with some saying it could be so-called “earthquake lights”, a rare phenomena that some people believe appears in the sky before, during or after seismic activity.

But scientists say there is a much more simple explanation for the vivid sunset. Known locally as a ‘candilazo’, it occurs when the sun’s light travels through a thicker layer of the atmosphere, scattering blue and violet wavelengths and allowing the red and orange hues to dominate the sky.

This is called Rayleigh scattering, and it is enhanced when there are more particles in the atmosphere, such as dust, smoke, or moisture. Saharan dust can often cause this to happen when it is carried on the wind across the Atlantic to this part of the world, further intensifying the colour of the sunsets in northern South America.

The earthquakes, which measured 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude, could have caused more dust particles to be present in the air after the collapse of many buildings.

However, geophysicists say there is no scientific evidence linking red sunsets with seismic activity, and science is torn over whether earthquake lights, or EQL, are even real.

“Geophysicists differ on the extent to which they think that individual reports of unusual lighting near the time and epicenter of an earthquake actually represent EQL,” The U.S. Geological Survey states on its website. “Some doubt that any of the reports constitute solid evidence for EQL, whereas others think that at least some reports plausibly correspond to EQL.”

Therefore, despite the online speculation, the dramatic sky over Caracas is simply a natural event and not linked to the earthquakes, which were caused by the grinding movement along the boundary between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates.