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[–] DeathRayDesigner ago 

At night there is no illuminating sunlight, so it will be impossible to say anything definitive about the smoke. And the reddish coloration characteristic of ammonium nitrate explosions is nitrogen dioxide (NO2) gas, which would only show color when illuminated. There was plenty of material flying through the air in Beirut, including a the warehouse and a crater's-worth of ground surface. The secondary explosions in Beirut presaged the main blast and were thought to be stored fireworks. Indeed, the Beirut explosion was more massive, which means there was less time for secondary phenomena to occur. (Blast effects tend to scale as the 2/3 power of the yield, so although the Chinese event had 29% of the yield as Beirut, it had 44% of the blast effect.)