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Just saw the pictures and videos of the massive explosions at the port of Beirut, which happened a few minutes ago.
What strikes me there is the rust-reddish explosion cloud, which I usually only saw on rockets using RFNA or similar during the Challenger accident by NTO.
The origin of the explosions was a warehouse at the port, right next to a grain silo, but the grain silo did not explode. Before the second large explosion, there had been multiple smaller explosions, like fireworks or ammunition going off.
The cloud of the first big explosion and the following smaller explosions had been gray to white, nothing too strange.
But the second explosion had brown to red cloud shooting up with little fireball being visible, before condensation obscured the view. Afterwards, a red-brown mushroom cloud was visible over the port.
Again, the explosion was massive - it destroyed a large radius around the port and caused damage and injuries through most of downtown Beirut. I would estimate the energy equivalent at at least 1 kT TNT.
Article with some pictures of the cloud here:
https://www.ksta.de/panorama/libanon-riesige-explosion-erschuettert-beirut-37136816
What strikes me there is the rust-reddish explosion cloud, which I usually only saw on rockets using RFNA or similar during the Challenger accident by NTO.
The origin of the explosions was a warehouse at the port, right next to a grain silo, but the grain silo did not explode. Before the second large explosion, there had been multiple smaller explosions, like fireworks or ammunition going off.
The cloud of the first big explosion and the following smaller explosions had been gray to white, nothing too strange.
But the second explosion had brown to red cloud shooting up with little fireball being visible, before condensation obscured the view. Afterwards, a red-brown mushroom cloud was visible over the port.
Again, the explosion was massive - it destroyed a large radius around the port and caused damage and injuries through most of downtown Beirut. I would estimate the energy equivalent at at least 1 kT TNT.
Article with some pictures of the cloud here:
https://www.ksta.de/panorama/libanon-riesige-explosion-erschuettert-beirut-37136816