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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.
The sky is blue?! Shit, gotta be aliens! /facepalm
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
And here I thought the M.I.B. had a city-wide neuralizer they can use.... Tsk tsk...
The blue was just arcing. As for damages most transformers are filled with mineral oil.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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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Well technically arcing releases a shitton of Ozone so you still shouldn't breath it in :-)
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.
I hope it wasn't Bumblebee, or my son will be devastated.
Transformers don't contain heavy metals
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
Not by any relevant definition of "heavy" eg toxic. There's a lot of iron and copper in these things I assume, but they aren't that horrible.
Or did you have some other definition in mind? There's lots to choose from with that term! %-P
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Why would aliens want to invade New York?
I reserve the write to mangle english.
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
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.
Modern transformers are filled with mineral oil. Historically, they were filled with more exotic chemical brews. There are many still in use that are filled with PCBs, which are definitely not good for the environment.
Sounds like a job for Sangamon Taylor.
Iron and copper can be pretty horrible when inhaled
If you're close enough for iron and copper (not heavy metals) to be a problem for your lungs, then I suggest you get some SPF75 because the UV from that arc flash will be your biggest concern, right after the fact that you probably coped a significant amount of molten copper to your face. Mind you your concern will be short lived as the natural end a transformer scenario is a boil over. You can rest calmly as your burn alive thinking "at least I did not inhale".
Historically, they were filled with more exotic chemical brews. There are many still in use that are filled with PCB [wikipedia.org]s, which are definitely not good for the environment.
Transformer oil doesn't last forever. What they were filled with historically is not really relevant today. Pretty much every transformer on the EPA's PCB register only has trace amounts of PCBs which were retained in the insulation after the oil was swapped out and other PCB containing parts were remdiated, and a PCB value of 0.05% is grounds for throwing out otherwise good oil (though I haven't seen oil replaced due to hitting this value outside of an actual PCB remediation program).
The short of it you'd be hard pressed to find a transformer "filled" with PCBs anymore in a city.
The short of it you'd be hard pressed to find a transformer "filled" with PCBs anymore in a city.
Except, possibly, for distribution transformers that have been in continuous operation for 40 years or more with no maintenance ever performed on them..... perhaps in some older building/elevator/other equipment installations.
If you have a working electrical utility --- you don't have a luxury of being able to simply shut off distribution every few years to maintenance all the equipment and change the transformer oil. It might be possible to service a power plant when other plants are still online - but as far as distribution equipment and branch transformers: people get upset when they lose power and the POCOs try to get things restored as quickly as possible ---- except if a transformer has failed, its unlikely to get attention: when was the last time your utility told you they were going to turn you off to check oil on the transformers for your block?
What? Transformers are made almost entirely out of heavy metals.
No.... Transformers are made mostly of Copper and Iron.
Heavy Metals refers specifically to certain metals such as Antimony, Lead, Mercury, Lithium, Manganese, Cobalt, Nickel, Organotin, Cadmium, Arsenic, Chromium, and Thallium -- metallic chemical elements that have relatively high density, are toxic or poisonous at low concentrations, and which may have a tendency to bioaccumulate in some form.
Copper and Iron in the environment are not a major concern, because a high concentration is required for them to be acutely toxic --- you'd have to be WAY too close to that explosion.
The major environmental risk is from the bioaccumulation, since it means that ANY release of heavy metals into the environment can be a problem ---- because the effect of exposure to the poison is cumulative: even a small concentration in the air, soil, or water leads to higher concentrations in plants and animals, that accumulate through the food chain, and when a human eats an affected plant or animal, the metals build up in the fat tissue in the human body (including the brain) over time and never leave or reduce, thus causing the risk of a permanent poisoning.
This does not apply to the predominant metals in a transformer.
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.
Except, possibly, for distribution transformers that have been in continuous operation for 40 years or more with no maintenance ever performed on them.....
If you have a working electrical utility --- you don't have a luxury of being able to simply shut off distribution every few years to maintenance all the equipment and change the transformer oil.
If you can't take a distribution transformer offline for maintenance you don't have a "working electrical utility".
Every country I've ever worked in (I haven't been in the USA) has required N+1 radial feeds, ring-mains, or a combination of both at any meaningful distribution level precisely because in order to provide good reliable power maintenance is a must. This goes doubly for something as important as the grid connection of the power plant where some countries require N+2 capacity.
when was the last time your utility told you they were going to turn you off to check oil on the transformers for your block?
When was the last time they were required to inform you? Personally at home, I never got any notification. However I was connected to the same 33kV feed as my work where we received a "Notice of reduced reliability of supply" approximately once a month as the utility worked on some equipment somewhere between our 33kV incomers and the main 330kV feed to our city. It was my job to ensure we weren't doing either high risk work or work on our redundant incomers during these periods.
The place you may see some PCBs is in pole top transformers in the country, but a typical city distribution grid is easy* to route around with a bit of effort even if you don't have redundant equipment.
*The work is easy. Redoing fault and protection calculations when you find some maintenance job requires a makeshift bus-tie between two substations that was "value engineered" out during design is far less easy.