Blue/Teal flashes lighting up Melbourne sky

reply to post by Maccaron.Shakaron


I just saw a turquoise/blue flash of light here at 1:40 am pacific time here in Vancouver, Canada. It lit up our entire North Shore mountain range but only for about a second or two. There was no thunder or noise that followed, the weather is raining, no wind and a little misty (common weather here). There is no electrical storm or anything out of the ordinary and I don't know for sure, but I don't think there is a power station on the mountains. I have travelled far to the north of here and have seen many types of northern lights and have never seen anything like this nor have I seen aurora borealis this far south or behave in such a way. The light lit up a very large area (tens of square km), and there is no way it could have been a light from a plane or a helictopter.

I searched the web and found this forum... just thought I would report it as I found it quite unsettling.

This sounds very much like flashes from a fault on an overhead high voltage feeder caused by contact with a branch or an animal/bird (possums in particular) and these usually have auto-reclosers which reclose the circuit breaker at the supply end a short time after it trips (as little as 5 seconds and up to a minute or so). We have multi-shot auto reclose relays in remote areas which will attempt as many as 10 recloses before locking out in an attempt to blast the fault off the line. A locked out feeder requires a patrol to locate the fault and clear it before supply can be restored (takes a long time) with a very good chance of a phase conductor being broken and on the ground requiring re-stringing.

The flashes from those faults light up the sky at night in a spectacular fashion and are visible from many miles away especially when there's any cloud cover or mist in the air.

reply to post by Pilgrum


That does sound quite plausible and there is definitely a likelihood of relays on the mountains. However, one more quick question for you... this lit up the entire mountain and the sky above it and was quite bright - enough to lighten my room (which is about 15-20 km away from the mountain). Knowing the area, but still approximating I would say it was probably about 15-20 sq. km. that were lit up. I would say that would be a reasonable, but conservative estimate. Even with light refraction, could a transformer flash emit that much light? However, you do bring up a valid point which is that I should call the power company... creeped me right out, though.

It's not necessarily a fault at a transformer and actually a fault within a transformer wouldn't even be visible unless the tank was ruptured (very rare). Flashes from overhead HV conductors clashing together are clearly visible at night even from over the horizon with cloud cover and the horizon is about 20 km away. The brightest one I ever saw lit up the entire sky from horizon to horizon due to a low cloud cover and the actual site of the fault was some 5km+ away from me - I was able to verify that from 'connections' in the power business here.

On a calm night the usual cause is animals like possums and that's why you might have noticed galvanised iron wrapping around wood poles with HV feeders on top about halfway up and a few feet wide (possum guard). In severely windy weather like land gale conditions (100km/hr+ winds) there'll be lots of faults due to conductors actually being blown together mid-span or small branches blown onto the line or even whole trees blown over and hitting the line on the way down.