Strange EMP or flare like light in central Utah...

Upon coming home from work last night with a friend at about 9:30 pm we pulled into my driveway to all of a sudden see a green flash of light what looked like a flare shoot up in our backyard about 100 feet above the house and then explode to create a huge brightened area. We sat in silence wondering WTF?

After it silently exploded the lights in our house that were on went off and the entire blocks lights died instantly. We drove around to find our street lights completely dead around a radius of 2 blocks around ours. All was dead for about 1 minute total and the flash lasted for about 15 seconds. I looked at my watch when this happened just because I thought it was a EMP of some kind but my watch still worked and the car was running in our driveway when this happened and continued to run just fine.

Shortly after it faded the lights flickered quite spastically then came back on and everything was normal. I ran into our back yard to figure out what it was or where it came from but found nothing after spending at least an hour looking.
We own 1 square acre of land and I swear it looked as if it came right out of our backyard. I went into the house and confirmed with my roomates that yeah the lights went out but they didn't think anything of it. Well they were'nt outside with me and my friend seeing what we did. To this day I have no clue what happened and have'nt figured it out so anyone that thinks they know? Lemme have it.....

If there is a logical explanation for this I'll accept it but until then it remains one of the weirdest things that have happened to me and I've seen some weird things in the past.



[edit on 8/2/2008 by Nekrostatik]

Sounds like it might've been a power transformer, or some other link in the power chain blowing. An EMP would've knocked out everything microcircuit based; your car's computer and radio, your quartz watch, etc.

reply to post by CO Vet


I thought it might have been a transformer but we don't have any in our backyard as the line to our house runs in front of the house. Would the power come back on after the transformer blew if that is what it was? I have seen a transformer blow before and it wasnt colored and didn't shoot up into the sky. I've also seen a transformer struck by lightning. IMHO it wasn't that but who knows.

The electrical grid usually has bypasses, so if one leg fails it won't take out the whole network. It sounds like something blew shutting down a saftey breaker, then the linesmen found the fault, isolated it, and restored power to the rest of the grid. Is there another street behind your house where the fault might've been?

reply to post by CO Vet


Yeah couldve been the other block. Sounds reasonable but could they restore the power within minutes?