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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."
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."
A friend of mine who lives in Astoria posted a video and it looked like some real Ghostbuster shit.
There's a good roundup of videos of this event over on Deadspin.
https://theconcourse.deadspin....
By the way, if you go and search Twitter for #Qanon, you'll find that there are already NYC blue light truthers who are saying this is a message to patriots that the "hot war" is coming and that the acting attorney general (aka "117") is about to unleash holy hell on unbelievers and other liberals. Or, that it's a false flag. I'm not shitting you.
https://twitter.com/travis_vie...
You are welcome on my lawn.
So great its a transformer...
couple of things stand out :
Environmental damage, what was the reason why it was blue and I'm going to guess that its not intended to be breathed in...
A prison had a power failure for 25 minutes... backup generators was not mentioned...
great reporting... simply follow what people say on twitter...
The sky is blue?! Shit, gotta be aliens! /facepalm
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Electric Blue... Indeed.
And here I thought the M.I.B. had a city-wide neuralizer they can use.... Tsk tsk...
Aliens
Typical gov't response. "Nothing to see, hear... Move along."
By late Thursday night officials said the event was caused by nothing more than a transformer explosion
They're more than meets the eye.
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I am sure I do not know every compound that could burn that color of blue, but all of the ones I do know of involve heavy metals. That was quite a bit of bright blue flame. That blue was not simply arcing, there was clearly a significant amount of deflagration going on. Betting ConEd will have nothing to say about it as usual, at least not until someone drags it out into the light despite their best efforts to cover it up. Enjoy all those heavy metals and PCB's there New Yorkers.
I hope it wasn't Bumblebee, or my son will be devastated.
Air turning into different color when high power high frequency energy passes through it is something HAARP's been studying for decades and explained it quite well.
Also, northern / southern lights. I'd be suprised if it didn't turn into a different color.
Why not. It makes about as much sense as why this is even a story.
... probably there were some?
Just saying :P
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why would aliens want to invade New York?
I reserve the write to mangle english.
...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...
Was Demi Lovato tweeting for the NYPD?
What kind of morons do we have on this planet?
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.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Harry Potter, you're needed
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Probably caused by a geomagnetic storm. Not a coincidence we just entered an area with fast moving solar wind on the 28th.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, this European research https://www.researchgate.net/p... seems to suggest that breakdown is mostly random, though for some reason I hear more about transformator explosions in New York than in Germany.
seems like it's technical difficult to design a high-voltage breaker:
the faulting arc-current didn't exceed the current when in normal working state, else some breaker should have tripped?
After all the crappy movies of Transformers being killed, are there any left to catch fire? Or was this one of those spontaneous fire things from the pile of their carcasses?
Not possible. Obama had an $800 billion "stimulus" to fix infrastructure. It became part of the base budget because of the way he got it passed immediately after taking office. So over his 8 years it was a total of $6.4 Trillion on "infrastructure spending". At the time he took office it was estimated that infrastructure spending needed about $4 Trillion, so its all done. Thanks Obama.
He also fixed all medical issues in the US with Obamacare, so you can safely ignore all stories on medical issues in the US as outright lies.
[hopefully the sarcasm is obvious, but the spending amounts he used on "infrastructure" are accurate. You obviously don't think we got the results we were promised and for some odd reason think spending even more will get them when it won't]
"causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion."
But in this Brave New Lazy World, diligent reporting means "I looked at my phone and saw those words, so it must be reality". Don't even bother to suggest that probably half are just tongue-in-cheek, and only a scant handful of might have experienced anything even approximating a "genuine fear" of alien invasion, and that those people were stupid and deserved their ignorant terror.
When journalism is indistinguishable from a well-below-average-IQ opinion, it is no longer journalism.
Or was this one of those spontaneous fire things from the pile of their carcasses?
No. This is what it looks like when Dr Manhattan from the Watchmen, farts.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Great cover story.
Never saw the night shining so bright / Then tried the switch on my flickering light / Blue skies way before dawn / Surge protectors from now on
Out of Trump stoires?
Neuralizers are red. Even the city-wide ones. (I guess you forgot.)
U.F.O. Unidentified Flaming Object
This was the remnants of the Democratic Party's Blue Wave crashing. Pelosi becomes the most despised Speaker in history for a second time because she controls the cash pouring in from SIlicon Valley.
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.
Whew! Good thing it didn't happen near us ignorant rubes out in flyover country. No telling what we might have thought!
Because spectacular failures of transformers happen all the time?
I live in a smaller town so ours was significantly smaller, but had something similar happen a couple years ago. That one made local news because it was only a 5 year old transformer and people were pissed as it took out our power for about 5 hours while they got it replaced. But most just don't make the news because power outages are rarely news worthy unless they're very wide spread. But this being NYC a) all the news lives there, and b) there were lots of people to view it, so it's international news.
This is one of those reasons why I always face palm when people start talking about how trivial infrastructure needed for wide spread EV adoption will be to deploy. People always seem to underestimate just what the electric grid deals with. Seeing something like this hopefully reminds people that in fact, we're dealing with a shit ton of power, and it's actually really hard to deal with.
not ozone. not oxygen. not arc discharge. look it up - if you're capable.
I was traveling westbound on the Long Island Expressway about 42 miles away (according to Google Earth), when I saw the sky in the distance light up with eerie blue-green flashes. It was quite the show.
Is that true? Americans really can react like that?
"causing many on social media to fear an alien invasion. "
No wonder...
It actually looked like an electric-blue mushroom cloud for a little while...
https://preview.redd.it/p3kzl6...
I am curious as to why the arcing lasted so long. Clearly this was a catastrophic fault where a couple of (very big) wires got too close and created a short circuit. Massive amounts of energy would about been used to maintain that arc. Should that have not tripped a circuit breaker or some other protection system upstream? or was the it as simple as the energy being consumed by the arc was similar to the normal load going through the transformer?
Anyone who has knowledge of high voltage distribution systems care to comment or provide a reference as to if this (apparent) lack of protection systems is normal or not, and in general what kind of protection systems are typically in place?
In the future, denizens of New York City will refer to this as "The Incident", and some will deny that it ever happened.
Ive seen a dozen news articles describing this event, and not a single one of them is anywhere close to having an accurate technical description of the event. No, it wasnt an explosion at a power plant that lasted for an hour.
Not like this: "no evidence of extraterrestrial activity". Now they think it's a cover-up, i.e. there WAS extraterrestrial activity but it is being denied. This is exactly how the mind works, at least in conspiracy theories. And the next group would say "but WHY would they deny it, wouldn't that be TOO obvious????"
Clearly this one an alien firefight. Theyâ(TM)re here. Theyâ(TM)ve been here for a very long time.
Isnâ(TM)t this how those coverup movies start?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
It was only Transformer Prime that got electrocuted, cant have any pesky robot-aliens roaming the streets ...
because it was no big deal. not even a little. happens all the time and you don't even know about it.
this time it gave a really great video. but really the power didn't even go out for the people who saw it...
sometimes even the authorities stop & admit 'yeah that was actually kinda cool'
It's to provide the Festivus Miracle! Of course!