PICTURES: Photographer 'never seen' phenomenon like dust cloud

Alex Vincent, 62, first noticed the sky getting darker at around 2.50pm this afternoon when he looked out of the window of his flat in Shelley Road, Worthing.

He thought it was night time: "I had a sleep after lunch, woke up and thought 'oh gosh, I must have slept too long'. I thought it was 8pm."

When he realised it was in fact a rare weather phenomenon, which is believed to have been caused by a Saharan dust cloud carried north by Storm Ophelia, Mr Vincent grabbed his Canon EOS 1300D Camera and took some snaps of the skyline over Worthing as it continued to get darker and darker. Most of his shots show the area around Shelley Road and Crescent Road, Worthing.

He said: "It was very weird. I have never seen it that dark at 3pm in the afternoon, even on the shortest day of the year. I thought to myself, has there been a huge accident in the sky? I just didn't know."

Mr Vincent has been taking photographs as a hobby since he was 18. To capture the yellow colour on camera, he had to put his camera on a manual setting.

He said he had seen two women struggling to take photos of the weather phenomenon on their phones. He explained that people may have struggled to capture the brownish haze on their smart phones because the devices automatically adjust the colour levels of photographs.

For more pictures and video of the dust cloud, click here: http://www.worthingherald.co.uk/news/video-worthing-seafront-looks-eerie-as-the-sky-goes-dark-1-8199462