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New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

nytimes.com

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Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#101

Post by PhasmaFelis »

refurb wrote: post #36
Fezzik wrote: post #3

I wonder how often these occur. When I was in my early 20s a buddy and I were about 18 hours in to a drive to Buena Vista, CO from Portland, OR, when a transformer exploded somewhere near us in a huge canyon. We thought it was noiseless nucleur explosion - the light was searingly bright and seemed to engulf everything. I just happened to call another friend (from a pay phone!) who had experienced the same thing. Even…

I had this happen while working from home in SF. My office window faces the backyard and a transformer in front of my neighbors house went up. No light show that I could see as it was early afternoon, but holy crap did the noise ever scare me. The window was open and it made this incredibly loud Bzzzzzz for about 10 seconds, then a small explosion. Took my brain about 20 seconds to connect the dots. See the smoking t…

When I was in college, I was leaning on the guy wire of a wooden power pole while chatting with a friend. I was rocking a bit, as I tend to do when standing still, and I noticed that the pole was swaying just a little too. So I tried bouncing the wire some more, and got several inches of sway out of the pole. Neat!

Then there was a loud POP and all the lights on the street went out.

Not sure what happened next, as it seemed like a good time to leave. Moral: don't do that.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#102

Post by lb1lf »

refurb wrote: post #36
Fezzik wrote: post #3

I wonder how often these occur. When I was in my early 20s a buddy and I were about 18 hours in to a drive to Buena Vista, CO from Portland, OR, when a transformer exploded somewhere near us in a huge canyon. We thought it was noiseless nucleur explosion - the light was searingly bright and seemed to engulf everything. I just happened to call another friend (from a pay phone!) who had experienced the same thing. Even…

I had this happen while working from home in SF. My office window faces the backyard and a transformer in front of my neighbors house went up. No light show that I could see as it was early afternoon, but holy crap did the noise ever scare me. The window was open and it made this incredibly loud Bzzzzzz for about 10 seconds, then a small explosion. Took my brain about 20 seconds to connect the dots. See the smoking t…

I work on medium-sized power electric systems (mostly in the few hundred kW-range), and have a strong aversion to being anywhere near our systems during first power-up.

Hence, I always carry a couple of pushbuttons and some 15m of cable in my toolkit - wiring them in parallel with the buttons normally starting the show, retreating, saying a brief prayer to the patron saint of electricians and starting up.

Did a system on a ship a few years ago, all set, me sitting in the corridor outside the drive suite and pressing the button closing the main contactor, only to be greeted by the tell-tale sound of a door being blown off its hinges and an arc forming. Oh.

Cue incredible light show on the bulkhead opposite the drive suite door; after a second of this, I come to my senses and figure the so-called arc safe contactor -well- isn't.

I push the button jury-rigged to cut power at the generator end, only to have nothing whatsoever happen. Oh oh.

Still arcing. I key my VHF to alert the engine room to kill the generator set and alert them to the fire getting started in the drive suite, only to be told in no uncertain terms to keep quiet as they were busy with an emergency.

Seconds later, ship goes black (and eerily quiet!) before the sound of boots running down the corridor as the emergency lights kick in.

I've never felt as relieved as I did when the firefighting crew later told me that I'd been most unlucky - a pump starter in the drive suite (not our delivery) had opted out of existence and had sooted down all of my precious kit.

It had blown up the very same moment I tried to start my equipment for the first time - and for a few minutes I was certain I had contributed to taking an investment in the several hundred million dollar range off-hire for however long it took to replace the damaged electronics.

Instead, the crew apologised profusely for having me come all the way to the wrong side of the planet only to see my delivery go up in flames not of my own making.

Priceless.

I'll remember the sound, the light and the smell - not to mention that sinking feeling - to the end of my days, though.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#103

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jp555 wrote: post #100
snidane wrote: post #64

Living in Astoria, NY and this happened a mile away from me. At first my TV blips, my spotify shuts down and outside you could see this very bright turquoise light all over the place. It was bright like it was a daytime just in the green blue color. At first I thought it must had been some fireworks nearby, New Year is coming, right? But there was no fireworks noise, no party noise, nothing, just this bright green li…

EMP weapons are not a real thing. If you detonate a nuclear weapon above a city, no matter how far above, you will call upon you a nuclear response. There’s no difference between an EMP attempt and a nuclear strike. So why would you attempt an EMP attack when that means giving up most of the destructive force to maybe burn out powerlines, and guaranteed surface nuclear response on your territory?

Non-nuclear EMP devices are surely real. They can fit in somebody's basement, don't have to be delivered by missile.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#104

Post by theandrewbailey »

hevi_jos wrote: post #52
DaOne256 wrote: post #27

I have never seen a transformator explosion in Germany or Europe. What is different in the american power grid?

US power distribution is way more distributed than in Europe, in which everything is planned and centralized. In the US there are transformers everywhere, you can see a house and a small transformer nearby. In Europe they have this big monsters that cost several million dollars and require a train to move. In Europe transformers in the city use to be underground and you won't see anything but a blackout of power. It…

> Old transformers are very toxic as mineral oil with aromatic rings is burned,which is carcinogenic.

PCBs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychlorinated_biphenyl

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#105

Post by rurp »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #90
sjwright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why IQ would necessarily correlate with knowledge about meteor strike safety best practices. On the other hand, if innate curiosity about environmental phenomena is at all correlated with IQ, it could result in a lowering of the average IQ instead.

> meteor strike safety best practices Which are similar (for the first minute anyway) for nuclear strike best practices. You would hope that there is still some knowledge of these. The probability of nuclear strike is low at any given time, but at the moment that you experience a unexpected extremely bright light in the sky it's higher.

If nukes are going off in a major US city it probably doesn't matter much where a person is standing.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#106

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

rurp wrote: post #105
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> meteor strike safety best practices Which are similar (for the first minute anyway) for nuclear strike best practices. You would hope that there is still some knowledge of these. The probability of nuclear strike is low at any given time, but at the moment that you experience a unexpected extremely bright light in the sky it's higher.

If nukes are going off in a major US city it probably doesn't matter much where a person is standing.

I'm not in a US city of any kind, but YMMV.

It might be pointless knowledge, but there it is FWIW: Duck and cover.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#107

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Driving home in the country when I was a kid, the sky lit up like daytime. Dad drove toward it - it was a power substation. He got out and asked a lineman nearby what was up, reported back to us "A raccoon got stuck across a transformer". Apparently it became the equivalent of a carbon arc searchlight, lasted for quite a while by my recollection.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#108

Post by jp555 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #103
jp555 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EMP weapons are not a real thing. If you detonate a nuclear weapon above a city, no matter how far above, you will call upon you a nuclear response. There’s no difference between an EMP attempt and a nuclear strike. So why would you attempt an EMP attack when that means giving up most of the destructive force to maybe burn out powerlines, and guaranteed surface nuclear response on your territory?

Non-nuclear EMP devices are surely real. They can fit in somebody's basement, don't have to be delivered by missile.

My high school physics says that’s BS, but EMP scare tactics does make for a great info-war weapon. It’s quite the boogeyman if you don’t have much science background.

Stuxnet like attacks are way way more plausible and likely.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#109

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jp555 wrote: post #108
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-nuclear EMP devices are surely real. They can fit in somebody's basement, don't have to be delivered by missile.

My high school physics says that’s BS, but EMP scare tactics does make for a great info-war weapon. It’s quite the boogeyman if you don’t have much science background. Stuxnet like attacks are way way more plausible and likely.

Well, high school physics trumps googling around I guess. Good luck with that.

Re: New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion

#110

Post by specialp »

mrfusion wrote: post #80

There’s so much we don’t know about high voltages. I never understood why we don’t research it more. I guess too dangerous. Even a phenomenon like this. Could we use it for lighting a whole City for less power than streetlamps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_lamp. These were used for a while before the incandescent bulb for street lighting. They aren't very power efficient. I used to work on one in a large projection system and I had to wear protective gear when changing the bulb because it could catastrophically explode.

BTW if anyone is interested in the voltage involved here, my friend works for ConEd and was on the scene. It was a 246kv step down transformer to 27kv. They have a lot of redundancy so it was fixed pretty quickly.

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