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Comment by uoaei | Hacker News Reader

Wow, some of the examples on YouTube are quite spectacular. Here's an example that shows the peculiar blue color pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjqxiSxhNCw

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I think these are just electrical infrastructure shorting out. It's pretty obvious for the ones that occur at ground level on the horizon. The cloud lighting up blue is something obscured at ground level but reflected by the clouds.

Similar effect as "power flashes" from tornadoes; tornado blows on power lines, power lines short out, blue arc is produced, everything is bright blue for miles for a bit.

I don’t think there was electrical infrastructure in 869 CE.

Nor did substantial evidence

Possible. A few years ago a 33KV line came down onto the interstate near me, very early in the morning as I was heading out onto the road a couple of miles away and over a hill. From my viewpoint it looked like an alien abduction scene. In fact that was my best guess until I crested the hill and started to understand what had happened.

I've never seen a high voltage line come down, but I did see a residential neighborhood distribution line start arcing.

The color and sound were unlike anything I've ever seen or heard.

From memory, something like a blue'd lightning bolt without thunder + the sound of 100 giant hornets shifted down in frequency.

If you've ever seen welding light in person, imagine that intensified a couple orders of magnitude.

The wind makes that it probably doesn't come across as as loud as it was, but something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNaIChPiiww&t=11

Yup! That's missing some of the low frequencies I remember, but captures the mid-high. I guess "incredibly loud sheet of paper tearing" would have been another description.

Sounds like it'd be intense enough to illuminate the base of low clouds at night, which would explain (most of?) what seems to be visible in that video.

Yeah we would see these in Texas during snow storms. That blue green flash is typical for transformers. I took a video many years ago (with a consumer grade camera, which were terrible back then, especially in low light), you can see the flash just after the 1:50 mark

https://youtu.be/UXf2N1iQ0Wc?si=d6QwBqqY9j1xl_7R&t=109

How do you know that's transformers? And doesn't this shut them down / why is it so regular that you knew to start filming?

You see them blow during thunderstorms driving down the highway or across a bridge. Dallas gets an alarming amount of thunder during the summer as squall lines sweep across the state every week or two. I would imagine this was a cascade failure. I was reading a book of watching a movie and saw them out of the corner of my eye and finally decided to start filming.

Without commenting on this specific set of videos, it is already generally considered established that there are bright sky flashes before earthquakes that are not related to electrical infrastructure, but rather, natural in origin.

Oh yeah they are 100% electrical arcs.

This is crazy. I vividly remember being a child during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake (Los Angeles) and driving with my father (who had to pick me up from a friends) and seeing the sky more of a flashing fuschia color.

I was in the same quake and the sky looked glowy green to me. But I was out by the Paramount Ranch so less densely populated than most areas.

How is that not transformer explosions?

It looks exactly the same to my eye. https://youtu.be/q1_ZtCXLnes

50% of that video is waiting for something to happen.

It is a 39 second video. You'll live to see it in its entirety.

Even in that one you can see some electrical equipment blowing at 08:47

Wow. I was watching this, then looked at the title… what the?! I live there!

Except, aren't these occurring during/after the shaking, not moments before. It really hurts my brain to try to even get to the level of thinking some people can just accept as a-okay

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