Yesterday evening at 19:30 what initially started out as a normal sunset turnes into something I have never witnessed before. The air actually turned orange making things that are normally white (cars etc,) look orange. Flowers that were red or orannge looked remarkably vibrant, as did people wearing clothing of a red or pink hue. But the most striking thing was the orange glow everywhere, like orange fog but no loss of visibility. The sun was cloud covered throughout this. Several of my neighbours came out to witness this and all stated they had never seen anything like it before.

I am no scientist but directly opposite the sunset the sky was very black. The sky above was a grey/orange colour. I assume that some form of light diffusion had taken place, the light from the sunset being bounced back from the very dark skies opposite and then travelling through the lighter cloud, above, the moisture in the lighter cloud enabling the orange effect. I am sure there are people on this forum who can explain it better than I can.

This phenomenon is known as a 'Dickinson Eclipse', and happens occasionally when the sun is partially obscured by David Dickinson, temporarily plunging the affected surroundings into a deep orange hue.

Description reminds me of a peculiarly orange/red sunset some 30 years ago.
Something everyone remarked on was how any electric lighting looked incredibly green.

The glow seemed to persist much later than normal which again supports high cloud involvement but it was also somewhat foggy in fact you couldn't really see the sun.

At the time there was speculation in local press it was related to volcanic dust.

I took a photo of what sounds quite similar to your experience a few years ago from our house

This was just around sunset and just as a heavy shower with thick black cloud was approaching. Doesn't sound as though it was as dramatic as yours but is this the same sort of thing ?

Nice photo that lanky.

Interesting. We had the same phenomena about a week ago here shortly before dusk with a strange green hue that eventually turned pink when dusk arrived (very much like looking through an old Lucozade paper). The pink, sometimes yellow glow happens a few times a year here but the green was very strange and a new one for me. Conditions at the time were heavily overcast/gloomy with low drizzle cloud.  

Not quite Lanky. The sky had more of a rippling orange/grey effect, but the most striking thing was the orange light at ground level, my neighbour was wearing a pink shirt which looked incredibly bright and flowers that were red or orange seemed to take on an incredible hue.. It lasted about 15 minutes, can't believe no one had the presence of mind to take a photo, but we were just in awe of what we were seeing.

I have experienced green light in Zante once during a short break in a very severe thunderstorm. On return from holiday  I researched this and discovered green light in thunderstorms can happen.

I remember experiencing that "looking through a lucozade bottle" effect a couple of times, although I recall the colour to be more as mauve.

I can also recall that amazing "volcanic" sunset in February 2008, a glorious orange hue in totally clear skies which lasted for well over an hour, even after the sun had set below the horizon. I've never seen anything like it.

And later on (zoomed out) . . .