An odd thing.

[peter]

Mrs P. was walking to work early the other morning when suddenly she saw some bright electrical style flashing on the horizon accompanied by a humming sound and then was plunged into blackness as all the street lights failed. She heard a cacophony of alarms going off and continued to work with difficulty where the hospitals back up generators were functional.
I arose later (following a late night shift) to find my Sky TV blown and my oven settings wiped out. My internet was resetting after being disabled by the powercut. At work later I was told that the shops alarm system had been wiped out, spoke to two people who, living some three miles apart, had both seen a flash from their kitchen windows as the event occured, and yet another who had seen the car alarms on an entire street of cars all go off simultaneously at the time.

I'm thinking that only an EMP pulse of significant magnitude could account for these various phenomena, but oddly there has been no mention of the event, far less an explanation in any of our local media to date.

[wayfriend]

Sounds like a transformer exploding. You know, those boxes high up on utility poles.



Why do electric transformers explode?

[Zarathustra]

Yep. If the electric company can fix it shortly afterward, it's not an EMP pulse of "significant magnitude." Ditto your cell phone or any other electronics not protected by a Faraday cage or electronic shielding: if they are working, it wasn't an EMP.

[rdhopeca]

Yep. If the electric company can fix it shortly afterward, it's not an EMP pulse of "significant magnitude." Ditto your cell phone or any other electronics not protected by a Faraday cage or electronic shielding: if they are working, it wasn't an EMP.

Yeah, my understanding is an EMP actually fries the circuits...it doesn't just interrupt them for a short period of time...

[peter]

Would it be expected for car alarms to be triggered by a transformer explosion? (But yes, it would seem to fit the bill.)

[rdhopeca]

Would it be expected for car alarms to be triggered by a transformer explosion? (But yes, it would seem to fit the bill.)

If the shock wave or sound moves the car enough, and the alarms are sensitive enough, then possibly.

[wayfriend]

Exploding Power Pole Sets Off Car Alarms!!!

[peter]

That appears to pretty much nail it. . So much for my theory that the Quasi-quargs from Quarg were behind it!

[Loredoctor]

Mrs P. was walking to work early the other morning when suddenly she saw some bright electrical style flashing on the horizon accompanied by a humming sound and then was plunged into blackness as all the street lights failed. She heard a cacophony of alarms going off and continued to work with difficulty where the hospitals back up generators were functional.
I arose later (following a late night shift) to find my Sky TV blown and my oven settings wiped out. My internet was resetting after being disabled by the powercut. At work later I was told that the shops alarm system had been wiped out, spoke to two people who, living some three miles apart, had both seen a flash from their kitchen windows as the event occured, and yet another who had seen the car alarms on an entire street of cars all go off simultaneously at the time.

I'm thinking that only an EMP pulse of significant magnitude could account for these various phenomena, but oddly there has been no mention of the event, far less an explanation in any of our local media to date.

Sounds like Russian hacking. No doubt Putin was behind it. /s

[peter]

Now here's an odd thing. My wife bought a cardboard container of salt - ordinary household stuff - from the supermarket and it sat in the cupboard as salt does while we used it for salting veg etc. Our house is not ecpecially damp but salt often does become a bit so, and normally I chuck it out and go for a new one. This one seemed to become very clumpy quickly, like wet sand almost, but I thought hell, its salt - what can happen to it, so I pulled the plastic cap of the tube and continued to use the damp salt with a teaspoon when I needed to. The cardboard container actually became so damp with the salt drawing in the water from the atmosphere, that in the end it formed a crust of salt on the outside, but then one day, when there was about a fifth of the salt left...........

(to be continued)

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

I was thinking a solar flare, maybe. Like the one that hit Canada(?) in the 1980s(?).

Oh well...

[Ur Dead]

Blame it on the squirrels...

Those critters run along the lines and when they come across a
transformer they usually blow the fuse on it. Then they get thrown away from the pole and tend to decay. but every once in a while one of then crosses and get lodged in place. This arcs the transformer heating the oil that provides some cooling and insulation for it to operate. When it gets hot enough it go blewie and thus wiped out power to a section of the grid. If it a transformer that provides power to a number of sections then a good portion of the grid in a city will go dark.

As far as an EMP it would have wiped out the car alarms circuits, the car circuits and most electronic devices in the area. Then you know it was an EMP.

dam squirrels...

either that or the transformer was old and failed..

[peter]

Since I made this op more reports have filtered back to me and it appears that I was by no means the only person who found the whole thing a trifle odd. In the end it was not the event itself so much as the complete absence of any coverage whatsoever in the media that raised eyebrows. This wiped out the power over a whole town and caused widespread problems that had to be sorted ......... Ahhh! Now I start to see some light - claims avoidence?

(...... from above

..... all of a sudden the salt completely reverted back to normal; no damp, no clumping and free flowing as sand in the Sahara. I would not have thought it possible! )