New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion (nytimes.com)

There was a boom; then a hum. The lights flickered. A giant plume of smoke filled the New York City sky, and turned it blue. From a report: "A sort of unnatural, fluorescent shade of blue," said Bill San Antonio, 28, who was watching Thursday night from inside a terminal at La Guardia Airport. "We thought it was a U.F.O.," said Yiota Androtsakis, a longtime Astoria resident. Ms. Androtsakis was not the only one. In the earliest moments, hundreds of Twitter users from across the city posted videos of the eerie lights, causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion.

By late Thursday night officials said the event was caused by nothing more than a transformer explosion. "No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity," the New York Police Department tweeted, adding later that the explosion was not suspicious. There was one Con Edison employee nearby when the fire started, and the authorities said he was unharmed. Still, Deputy Inspector Osvaldo Nunez, the commanding officer of the 114th Precinct, conceded that the episode "was spectacular." "You could see it from the precinct, and the precinct is about a half-mile away," he said. "You felt it in your chest, the explosions, and the night sky turned an electric blue."

Comments

Re:Toxicity of that smoke is pretty much a given

[thegarbz]

I am sure I do not know every compound that could burn that color of blue,

I know one: Air. When air ionises it turns blue. This happens during a lightning strike, and also happens during HV arcing. Oh and bonus points: It has nothing to do with compounds and everything to do with temperature.

That blue was not simply arcing

You sound like someone who has never seen arcing. ... Or a transformer fault for that matter.

there was clearly a significant amount of deflagration going on

Deflagration is a big word, you should look up what it means before using it.

Enjoy all those heavy metals and PCB's there New Yorkers

Transformers don't contain heavy metals, and even old transformers only have trace amounts of PCBs thanks to them being banned in the 70s and routine maintenance or breakdown maintenance replacing most of those components (especially the oil) in old transformers.

But this is NYC we're talking about. Even if it were PCBs, heavy metals, and your tinfoil hat which were vapourised it's probably an improvement over the air there anyway.

Re:Toxicity of that smoke is pretty much a given

[drinkypoo]

Transformers don't contain heavy metals

What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.

and even old transformers only have trace amounts of PCBs thanks to them being banned in the 70s

Completely false, there are still old transformers with PCBs in them in the USA, and some of them are in the New York power system.

But this is NYC we're talking about. Even if it were PCBs, heavy metals, and your tinfoil hat which were vapourised it's probably an improvement over the air there anyway.

PCBs being pretty much the most toxic thing that we have in our cities, I'm guessing not.

Transformer explosions

[RobinH]

I happen to have witnessed 2 different unrelated pole transformer explosions. In one case I was less than 150 ft / 50 m away, and in the second case it may have been 4 times that. I happened to be looking right at the second one when it happened, and there was a blinding blue flash. Both booms scared the crap out of me. I have also trained throwing a grenade (detonation maybe 30 ft away, behind a concrete wall). While the nearest transformer explosion was about 5 times further away, I would guess the energy at the point of the explosion was in the same ballpark (though the transformers don't produce shrapnel, thank goodness). The available fault current in the case of an electrical arc fault can be extremely high. I wouldn't want to be standing next to one.