Skies across Britain turned an unusual shade of yellow-orange on Monday, due to an unexpected secondary effect of Hurricane Ophelia.

The strange hue was captured by Reuters photographer Tom Jacobs just before 3.30pm at Canary Wharf, in London's financial and business district, reported Business Insider.

Passers-by stopped to snap photographs of the sky, which seemed to have an eerie tinge of red in some areas.

Hurricane Ophelia battered Ireland on Monday, knocking down power lines and trees. It was the largest hurricane recorded so far east in the Atlantic Ocean. The Category 3 storm swept through Portugal's Azores islands on Saturday, packing winds of at least 178kmh.

"As Ophelia has come up from the Azores, the storm has picked up Saharan dust from North Africa and picked up dust from wildfires in Spain and Portugal," a spokesman for Britain's Met Office said. "This yellowish hue is from the dust that is high up in the atmosphere and the blue element of the sunlight is scattered by the dust, but the red element gets through, so the sun appears redder and you get this sort of yellowish tinge."

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