Cotton Clouds and Unseen Sun: A Story of Manchester's May 13th
The great, sprawling, characterful city of Manchester, often veiled in a familiar shroud of grey, awoke on this Tuesday, the 13th of May, to a morning that felt… different. Not just a little different, but profoundly, delightfully, un-Mancunian different. The sky wasn't the usual canvas of subtle cloud variations; it was, from the very earliest hours, a vast, clear expanse, promising a day that locals might talk about for a while. This was the story of sunshine, warmth, and a persistent easterly breeze, a narrative rarely told with such clarity over the industrial heartland of the North West. Long before the official moment of sunrise, which arrived relatively early at 5:11 AM, the pre-dawn air held a crisp coolness, settling near the overnight low, which would eventually bottom out in the single digits Celsius (around 6-8°C or 43-48°F). But even in that cool, quiet air, there was a stillness, a sense of settled conditions that felt promising. The sky was clear, a deep, inky blue...