By Tim Binnall
An eerie darkness suddenly fell over a Brazilian city on Monday afternoon and left mystified residents wondering if it was a sign of the End Times. The event reportedly occurred at around 2 PM in the city of Sao Paulo. Much to the amazement of people living and working the metropolis, the sky inexplicably grew incredibly dark to the point that it looked more like midnight rather than a couple of hours after noon.
A number of unsettled residents soon took to social media with concerns that "the final judgment is coming" and that the Apocalypse was at hand. In an effort to get to the bottom of the mysterious incident and, no doubt, quell the fears of people in the city, various officials and institutions offered reasons for the puzzling darkness.
One organization, the National Institute of Meteorology, indicated that the high-elevation city had somehow found itself "inside a cloud." Meanwhile, a weather forecasting company blamed forest fires in Bolivia, Paraguay, and parts of Brazil. Additionally, a cold front was also put forward by some experts as a possible cause of the blackout.
Ultimately, it was determined that the spooky darkness was most likely the result of a powerful cold front pushing smoke from the aforementioned forest fires, that were nearly two thousand miles away, to the city of Sao Paulo. Fortunately, the odd predicament did not last too long as the sky over the city cleared up after about an hour.
In what may be a testament to the troubled state of our planet, the Sao Paulo incident was actually not the only such case of sudden darkness to occur recently as a region of Siberia also experienced a similar phenomenon earlier this month. As in Brazil, the blackout was blamed on smoke from nearby forest fires and inclement weather coming together to darken the sky and, understandably, frighten residents who feared the worst.