Could lightning turn off all lights in a city momentarily?

Hey, im typing this froma phone so cant upload and got to keep this short and sweet..

last night i witnessed what i can only describe as silent lightning...

And it was like nothing i have witnessed ever in my life..

it was cold and snowy, and i recorded for over 45mins on my phone...

That was around 3:30am dec 11th..

But later today.. upon watching back i notice that upon a mass of light miving across the whole city from my high vantage.. When played back slow.. the lights in the city.. i mean everything.. goes dark for just a short fraction of a second.. then re-appears.. either that or my phones camera was being interferred with.. It appears right before and right after the flashes of light spanning across the whole city in what i can describe as streaks , balls, and other strange visuals.

But the whole time.. not even a tiny whisper of sound was heard.

I understand we are experiencing current intensified weather.. but this just blew my mind!!

I'll edit the video and upload soon as possible.

Thanks for reading

a reply to: the2010apprentice

Generally depending on where you live or the size of the locality, there might be a central point where the electricity is being generated, if you only have one of these said locations in that area, I would think that yes a lightning strike to that central point, where electricity is being generated could possibly cause a localized outage for any period of time, which if supplying power to homes and businesses they would simultaneously have a blackout...but if you get to larger metropolitan areas or regions you have to think grids, so even though it might seem unbelievable, I think it can happen momentarily if the right power station is hit.

I live just outside Glasgow, Scotland.
From my location I could see the whole of Glasgow City and surrounding areas.
I'll need to analyse these videos a little more.
If anybody can recommend any video edit software to slow down and zoom etc.. that would be appreciated.
ps.. its a pentium4 3ghz stoneage pc so keep the program within my specs haha

It is not only possible for this to happen, it is extremely common in areas with very central, localized grids, especially if lightning strikes the right places.

What is odd, though certainly not unheard of, nor impossible, is lightning near the dead of winter during snowy weather. Normally, the conditions that tend to produce lightning the most are also absent or rare during winter in most of the temperate zones. Thunderstorms happen most often in spring and early summer the most for a reason. That said, it is not impossible and does on occasion happen in the winter in the northern temperate zones. Thunderstorms are not the only cause of lightning, either, so when you consider that you mentioned weather in your area had been more intense than normal, it's probably even more an indicator of just how intense weather conditions in your area are.

yes it could however from what you say i think
it may well be the exposure control of your camera
it would react to the brilliance of the lightning
by reducing the shutter momentarily
(if the camera can react fast enough)
making the city lights seem to dim.

a reply to: ShayneJUK

After looked at the video..

its clear that the street lights which are high pressure sodium turn off about 30 metres from my location and turn back on slowly with a blue coloured element and glow rather than the standard warmwhite orangey colour.. then it goes orange again as normal. this all within less than half a second!!

its quite impressive the lights are all effected individually and turn on at different rates.. but all within less than a half second..

i'll get this video up soon

I could see roughly 15 miles x 15 miles area.. so yeah.. fairly large in size.

a reply to: the2010apprentice

It could have been a power surge, or momentary power outage. We had one of those today in my part of town, it lasted for less than a second but it still reset my stove clock. If the power grid is built in such a way that a certain location could knock it all out at once, then it is definitely possible. I find the descriptions of the silent lightning and strange visuals interesting.

a reply to: darkbake

Another interesting aspect of it all.. The "lightning" if it definetly is that but im sure it is...
It kept hitting the same area every 3 - 5 mins.. it was very concentrated in two areas of my view .. and thats how i knew where to point the camera..

Theres been around 3 days of these flashes in the sky with no thunder now.. i also climbed a munro on sunday and my friend and myself had seen one of these flashes but couldnt work out what it was as yet again.. not a single sound was heard...

could be a load of electrical activity in the skies i guess. its been very strange weather and lightning snowstorms

are you going to upload the video so we can see it?

a reply to: okamitengu

Yes i will do, but as i mentioned i need to edit it first as i cant upload 45mins of video.

sure you can!! (:
if you edit the footage, people will call fake on you. usually people want RAW unedited.

if you upload it to maybe a dropbox and then add clips to youtube or something?
i look forward to checking it out

a reply to: the2010apprentice

it was cold and snowy,

if power lines ice up and short together current bridges form and can be quite spectacular. Visible for miles in the night sky, but no thunderclap like from lightning.

Same with wind blown tree branches connecting with power lines.

Yah, it can affect your lights…

originally posted by: the2010apprentice
a reply to: ShayneJUK

After looked at the video..

its clear that the street lights which are high pressure sodium turn off about 30 metres from my location and turn back on slowly with a blue coloured element and glow rather than the standard warmwhite orangey colour.. then it goes orange again as normal. this all within less than half a second!!

its quite impressive the lights are all effected individually and turn on at different rates.. but all within less than a half second..

This could also be the results of a light sensor on the street lamps being fooled by the brightness of the lightning. For a moment, the sensor thought it was dawn and shut off the illumination. Then when it turned dark again the lights started up. It is normal for certain vapor discharge lamps to have a startup sequence like what you see, as it's booting up the plasma.

a reply to: mbkennel
That wouldn't explain everything going dark including lights not hooked up to sensors, but I think you might be on to something with the "sensor" idea. If the camera sensor is exposed to a lot of light, it will reduce exposure and make everything look dark. I don't have an example with city lights but here's an example of a gray sky that appears to turn almost black after the lightning strike, but the color of the sky didn't change..this is merely a photographic effect. This is before, during, and after a lightning strike, where the only constant brightness is of the time/date display...notice how everything else goes darker after the camera's exposure sensor is flooded with light from the lightning strike:


Source:
www.youtube.com...

That wasn't really that close or bright, so if you got a strike that was closer/brighter, it would affect the camera's light sensor even more, meaning the exposure would get even darker after the strike.

Lightning storms certainly can and do cause limited power outages, but probably not for an entire city...or at least that would be very rare. It would most likely affect some limited portion of a city.

If the video is uploaded, maybe we can tell if there was an actual power outage or if the camera was temporarily "blinded" from the flash of light, making it look dark for a short time, sort of like the above example.

Note that the same thing happens to your eyes...if they are accustomed to the dark and you can see a lot of stars, if someone shines a flashlight in your eyes, the stars may seem to disappear for a little while, but obviously they didn't blink out, it's just your eyes adjusting exposure similar to how a camera makes adjustments. It may take a little while before you can see the stars again.