Blood-red rain in Russia’s Norilsk in Siberia led some to fear a biblical plague or the apocalypse because of the strange phenomenon, but a local business owner has a more logical explanation.
One witness to the rain said, “It is like a horror movie,” the UK Express reported.
It turns out that the brightly colored rain, which showed up in pictures online, was the result of a cleanup operation by a local metal plant, Russia Today reported.
Nornickel, a local company that owns the Nadezhdinsky processing plant, said that iron oxide had been cleaned from a factory floor and roof a few days earlier, and had been set out for disposal until just before the rainstorm occurred, RT reported.
The company said that “a gust of wind blew it over the parking lot while the rain caused it to fall” over the parked cars, causing the odd coloring and appearance, RT reported.
The rain only appeared in the area of the parking lot and was not widespread, the Express reported.
The facts didn’t stop some on Twitter from speculating about the rain, however.
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