Dark Day in Jamestown
By United Press

    A giant smoke screen that drifted down from a Canadian forest fire area and blacked out the afternoon gun from millions of Americans Sunday, still cast a pall today.

    Most people took the strange phenomenon in stride yesterday when the awesome pall made the sun appear like an eerie Halloween Moon.  But the more fearful prayed for salvation, believing the end of the world was at hand.  Others worried with sinking hearts that an atomic explosion had occurred.

    Birds and chickens took advantage of the mid-day darkness to go to roost as if it were night. 

    Extends to Tennessee

    Weather Bureau officials tabbed the awesome spectacle as a 200-mile wide and three-mile thick blanket of smoke extending from Toronto, Ont., to as far south as Knoxville, Tenn. and as far west as Iowa.

    A chill blast hit a large area of the nation again today under a heavy layer of smoke.  But the smoke, about 3,000 feet thick, was moving out into the Atlantic Ocean and the Weather Bureau expected temperatures to return to their Autumn normals as the sun again comes into view.

    An airplane pilot who landed at LaGuardia Field, New York, said the smoke base was at about 14,000 feet altitude and its top at about 17,000 feet.  It was moving seaward at about 35 miles an hour,  The smoke was carried along from smoldering forest fires in northern Alberta and the District of Mackenzie in Canada.

    The dense layer was thickest over Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.  "Huge clouds of thick yellow smoke" forced airlines pilots to land.  Many towns turned on street lights motorists switched on headlights.

    In Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Big League baseball games were played under lights.  Darkness came an hour early to New York's Great White Way after a sun-glazed afternoon.

    In some places, the temperature dropped to near freezing when the thick pall robbed the second day of Autumn of warming sunlight.

    The smoke of smoldering fires in Alberta and other provinces were sucked through a 1-700 mile natural "wind tunnel," Canadian weathermen said.

    Darkness Lasts 3 Hours

   In most places in the U.S. the artificial darkness lasted three to four hours.  The layer scudded southeastward at about 35 to 40 miles an hour.

    A Northwest Airlines pilot flying over Michigan radioed that he was landing because of poor visibility and the smoke had seeped into the plane cabin where passengers could smell it.

    Detroiters watched a weird color display caused when the sun shone through the smoky sky.  At Lansing, Mich., the yellowish cast turned to blue and green, then back to yellow again.

    Forest Fires Engulf Six New Canadian Areas

    Edmonton, Alta. (A.P.) - Telegraph lines linking the Yukon and Alaska with Edmonton were cut during the weekend as forest fires in northern Alberta and British Columbia spread to six new areas and encircled the settlement of Fort Nelson, B.C.

    The line, operated by Northwest Communications System,  was cut as fire burned down poles on a two-mile stretch of the Alaske highway.  Officials expected to restore service today.

    Two of the new fires were eating into marketable timber stands.  One old fire, in the Veterans' Land Settlement project near Wanham in northern Alberta, was brought under control after  it had destroyed three farms, some livestock and crops and hundreds of trees. 

    The fires sent a pall of smoke drifting as far east as Ontario some filtered down into the United States.

    In Edmonton, 60 to 340 miles from the fire points, the sky remained clear most of yesterday, but towards evening a blanket of  smoke up to 4,000-feet thick brought early dusk to the city. Pilots landing at the Edmonton Airport used landing lights during daylight.  Visibility was down to one mile.

    Road blocks were set up on the Alaska highway as flames skirted both sides of the road and smoke cut visibility to zero.

    Washington. (INS) - A helicopter will be dispatched to a spot 120 miles southwest of Goose Bay, Labrador, today in an effort to bring out 16 members of a crashed B-50 bomber crew.

    The Air Force said that the survivors, reported "safe and sound" by three air-rescue parachutists who jumped to their assistance, would be transferred by helicopter to a near by lake.  There they will be put aboard amphibious planes and brought out to civilization, probably Goose Bay. 

    Air rescue service headquarters said that food, water and survival equipment were the parachutists - 1st Lt. Daniel Fitzgerald, Sgt. Walter W. Millard and Sgt. Lynn A. Burke, all stationed at Goose Bay.

    The marooned men were sighted from the air after three days of search.  Until the crash scene was sighted, the big bomber - second largest in U.S. service - had been unreported since it took off from Goose Bay for Tucson, Ariz., Thursday.

" 'Darkness' Dates Wrong "
by John Cowan

    I enjoyed reading George Kunz's article on "Darkness at Noon" in The News.  One minor error: His dates were wrong.  It was Sunday, Sept. 24 (not 25), and Monday, Sept. 25, not 26.

    The reason I know: I had always said that it would be cold day in hell when I married.  At the ripe old age of 32 I walked down the aisle with the former Barbara Gale in Wilson, N.Y., on Saturday, Sept. 23, 1950.  That evening, en route to our honeymoon retreat on Lake Chautauqua, we encountered snow flurries as we were driving through the hills east of Mayville.  There was the cold!  The next day when I awoke, it was as dark as night outside.  For a suspenseful moment I greatly feared the remainder of my prediction was also true!
 

10/31/2003