Red Cloud Mystery Over Delmarva On March 3 Has Been Solved

March 4 2021

After a very busy month of winter weather, we finally had a quiet day with not a cloud in the sky over The Mid Atlantic. All of a sudden I received a bunch of messages on Wednesday evening from across Delmarva from people asking about this glowing red cloud. As I said, we had a clear, cloud free sky. So my first guess was that it must have been some unique optic from the setting sun.

Thanks to many reports and a few key details, we figured out what it was.

Red Cloud Over Salisbury

Marlene Catlin shared this wide open field view near Salisbury.

Red Cloud Over Easton

Thanks to Craig Allen, a frequent contributor, who confirmed this view in Easton.

It was the next two reports that added to the mystery… Proving this was NOT the sun.

Red Cloud Over Chesapeake City

Michelle Harris-Weaverling added more context. She mentioned that this was seem facing Southeast, while the sun was setting in the West.

Here are two photos of both directions taken around the same time.

Red Cloud to the Southeast….

The view of sunset at the same time.

Video Of Red Cloud Over Millsboro DE

This video from Kids Jenkins-Hagy really helps to complete the scene. You can hear her surprise also noting that this was on the opposite end of the sky from the setting sun.

What Was It? Enter Wallops Island Rock Launch

This turned out to be a little known event for the Department of Defense. They were studying ionization in space, and it appears to have been a success.

A three-stage suborbital sounding rocket was launched in the afternoon on March 3 for the Department of Defense from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The launch was to study ionization in space just beyond the reaches of Earth’s atmosphere: https://t.co/OIDGWaAOS2 pic.twitter.com/JMLYze8DVE

— NASA Wallops (@NASA_Wallops) March 4, 2021

Wallops Island Location

Being located along the Atlantic Coast along the Southern Delmarva, many launches up to the northeast can be viewed in our region. Delmarva gets to see the most, but the larger rockets, including supply missions to ISS have been seen as far as Pennsylvania and the western Maryland mountains.