6:41 AM
6:42 PM
12 hours 1 minutes
On this date in 1950, residents of most of the northeastern U.S., from the Great Lakes to the mid-Atlantic coast east to Maine, as well as neighboring provinces of Quebec and Ontario watched the sun fade as a dense pall of smoke from forest fires in northwestern Canada gave the sun a bluish-lavender hue. The smoke persisted through the 30th, the same northwest winds driving the smoke, also bringing wide-spread frosts and freezing temperatures.