From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Oct. 11, 1986:

About 900 daffodil bulbs had arrived at the home of Mary Lou Wright. The annual Daffodil Club’s order had just been delivered from England, and Wright’s home was the designated pick-up point for members. For those planning next spring’s daffodil garden, the next step was to find a day that was dry enough to do the planting, as rain had been falling on the Lawrence area for several days.

The area was experiencing not only rain, but conditions from beyond the atmosphere. Those residents with cable television were experiencing a “sun outage,” according to Dave Clark, general manager of Sunflower Cablevision. Subscribers watching channels which the cable station received via satellite were seeing what Clark called “sparkles” on their screen for a few minutes around 4:00 p.m. each day. Clark explained that these outages occurred a couple of times a year when the satellite passed directly between the sun and the earth. He assured subscribers that the problem would not last beyond next week.