An explosion outside my apartment building...
This is a real thing, and I don't think that it was the first time that it has happened. I want to pool our collective brainpower to figure out what it was.
The symptoms: A bright light outside my apartment, an explosion, very, very brief loss of power (reset some clocks and not others) and an electric hum.
Now, last night there had been a thunderstorm earlier, but I don't think that it was related to...whatever it was, because there was no thunder and we have seen it one other time, in the middle of a bright sunny day not long after we arrived in Atlanta. And that first time Animala still saw the flash. When it happened last night it was drizzling just a tiny, tiny bit.
We weren't the only ones who saw it. A couple of people in the other apartments peeked outside after it happened. All of the lights seemed to be on in the other buildings. I went around my building with a flashlight, because if some power lines had fallen down, I didn't anyone to get near them, but there was nothing down. My suspicion first fell on a street light above my parking lot, which was off when I stepped outside, while all the other ones were on. I thought that it had blown, but about 15 minutes later, the damned thing turned on again. Lastly, no crews showed up to fix...anything. (There was an ambulance by a few hours later, but I'm presuming that was completely unrelated.) So, I don't know what it was.
Question: could it have been the street light? Could it have failed so spectacularly (and audibly) and still turn itself back on? It looks like an ordinary, darkness-activated street light mounted on a wooden telephone-like post. I am presuming that because street lights are safety devices that they are engineered to have a back up, but I don't know. Can anyone else think of another explanation, besides the obvious Illuminati pulse weapon?
HJ
Seed Newsvine
13 comments:
Guess - streetlight went off because of the flash, but wasn't the cause of the flash.
Sounds more like a transformer blowing and an automated switch redirecting power.
Was the flash blue?
This happened quite a bit before they replaced the transformer on the pole outside my house. As it was explained to me (a non-electrical type), the fuse blew, causing the power blip, and the power was redirected/reset. It tends to happen when it's drizzling out - I guess there's something about the free-standing free-floating moisture that triggers something.
Sometimes these things can catch on fire. Generally the fire will burn itself out, but if there are trees and vegetation around, you might want to call the fire dept to report it.
Lightning hit a transformer next to my apartment once. Huge blue flash and a noise like a semi hitting a concrete wall. Don't remember if it was raining then or not. Sure lit up the world for a few seconds, though.
Could have been ball lightning (whatever that is).
On a somewhat random note, I've considered the possibilities of a device producing the same effect of an EMP. I discussed it with a physics student once, and he said it could be done.
Let's go backwards.
I don't think that ball lighting could be it because I'm not convinced there is such a thing. It's like this catch-all phlebatenum that can do anything, is never the same twice, and yet everyone seems compelled to call "ball lightening."
It sounds like the best bet is a transformer, but I don't remember it being blue. Those fuckers, when they blow, they pack some punch. One blew up on the outskirts of campus once. It was very bomb-like. This was not quite that big, but maybe it was farther away that I thought. I'll check again in the morning, when there is some light to see if there are any transformers readily visible.
HJ
My vote is for the transformer, with the cutout relay resetting. One of these days the transformer will burn up and you'll be able to tell for sure. :)
I think it's entirely possible that what you heard/saw was DM's head exploding...
Failing that ... UFO's - you just can't trust those little grey buggers ... aliens I mean, not squirrels (although they're tricky little bleeders too)...
My money is on YHWH and his bad aim.
Just as the others said: it was a transformer exploding. The coolest one I ever saw was when I kinda lived on the outskirts of town and it was really dark, lots of lightning (yay Florida), and no rain. The thing arced pretty blue electricity for a good five seconds before going BOOOOM and power flickering for a little bit.
Tiny meth lab in your power lines
Definitely a blown transformer, obviously Optimus Prime got a hooker.
Most likely a blown transformer.
They come in a variety of sizes and locations (Pole top to underground vault). Obviously, a large transformer in an underground vault will produce a huge directed blast out of the vault's openings. (like your campus blast) and sound quite different from a smaller pole-top transformer blowing.
They can blow from a lightning strike miles away. They can blow from a car striking a power pole miles away. They can blow because of age.
While they can produce a blue flash it isn't a certainty. And it is usually not visibly apparent afterward that a pole-top transformer has blown.
We had a transformer by our house that would "explode" fairly often; it turned out that squirrels were using it to commit (presumably inadvertant) suicide. It took years for the power company to fix it with a reset.
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