DELUGE OF RED RAIN

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 56, 29 November 1929, Page 13

DELUGE OF RED RAIN

PHENOMENON AT BLENHEIM By Telegraph.—Press Association. Blenheim. November 28. Yesterday Blenheim was deluged with a red rain. This phenomenon made itself evident by tinting such delicate flowers as arum lilies a delicate pink and leaving a rust-like deposit upon foliage plants, on the windows of motor-cars, and along the top of fence rails. In one case a Farnham lady, who left a week’s washing on the line, found it so streaked with red that the various articles will have to be washed again. .Some mouths ago the appearance of a red rain in Blenheim and other parts of the Dominion was attributed to dust storms in Australia. The theory put forward was that great clouds of red dust, which had been blown across the Tasman Sea at a high altitude, had fallen over New Zealand. It is considered by some people that yesterday’s phenomenon might be accounted for by the extraordinary electrical disturbance which ushered in the dawn. The theory is advanced that a meteor or thunderbolt burst over Blenheim, tilling the sky with minute particles of red dust, which later drifted to earth with the rain.