Did the sky really go dark as biblical inerrantists insist?

That seems like an apt description of what we often see here in the midwest. The local radio station would likely be announcing that a severe thunderstorm warning, or sometimes a tornado warning, was in effect.Sure, "over all the earth" seems like overstatement, but that's the kind of metaphoric description that people sometimes use. Why not take "over all the earth" as meaning "as far as the eye can see."

Sure, if you make allowance for inevitable rhetorical hype. A modern preacher might say something similar in his sermon about a contemporary event. This sort of colorful description is a common aspect of the rhetorical style of many orators and preachers.It's only a problem for people who want to be excessively literalistic in their reading.