What is going on with the sun today? Your pictures!

By our Weather Correspondent, Kate Haskell.

Not only did we start the day with temperatures of 20°C in some places we also had a very dark, foreboding sky with an orange glow and an orange halo to the sun.

On top of that, we have strong winds to contend with today, reaching 70mph in exposed areas.

Well, ex-hurricane Ophelia is to blame for the strong winds and also the warm temperatures as it drags in tropical air as it passes by.

The strange skies though were perhaps a bit more of a mystery. We think this is possibly due to desert dust high up in the atmosphere originating from North Africa, along with smoke from wildfires occurring over northern Iberia.

As ex hurricane Ophelia passes to the west of the UK is it bringing with it air from much further south and this air is not only giving us today’s warmer temperatures but also bring dust with it.

This dust scatters the blue light from the sun letting more red light through much as at sunrise or sunset.

Measurements from the surface air quality network show no evidence of significant dust concentrations in the air at the surface.

Thankfully, with today's technology, we are able to find out quickly what is happening and why.

Just imagine waking up to those skies some two hundred years ago; you might have thought something very bad was going to happen!