Just got home from work and had to post about this.

I work in downtown Orange, Texas and tonight something strange happened. I'm not sure if I'm posting in the correct forum and if I'm not I'm sorry but I'm not sure where to put this because in my opinion it is truly in the grey area (hoping that doesn't mean the grey aliens).

Anyways, while me and my co-worker were closing up shop we experienced something quite strange, and I'm sure a lot of others in this small town. I had just turned the lights off in the building and I was cleaning up a bit when he and I noticed the night sky outside suddenly turned red very briefly followed by a power surge or something and all of the street lights went off. My co-worker and I were stunned as to what had happened and even started thinking of reasonable explanations as to the cause.

For people who know the Orange area which is not too far from Beaumont or the Louisiana border you'll know that there are a lot of power plants, some of which have caught on fire or exploded but when this happened the sky was always orange and it lasted quite a while. What we saw was very bright and very brief. I thought maybe a transformer but within a matter of minutes the street lights were back on. I'm not sure what it was that happened tonight but it was definitely strange and with all the high strangeness going on lately I figured I had to share this.

Yeah it was definitely strange.Something similar happened 2 years back in our own
vicinity.We were also unable to make out what was it.

Anyways nice thread and let's see what others will say.


S&F.

That would have given you a nice scare, never experienced that before seems pretty darn unusual.
Going to watch this thread too see if anyone comes up with an explanation cause i sure don't have one :\

or could have blown a transformer and the rest of the lines took up the slack as they are designed to do in such a case.

Living in Texas myself, one of the things I am noticing is the heat and wind. From the basics of science, there has been alot of dust and smoke from the west blowing in, that would cause the sunsets to be a deeper color than normal, to include orange/red.
The rolling blackouts/power outages, however, is something that I have noticed in the past year, where it seems like there is a surge, then a black out, then the power pops back on.

Forgot to add I live in Wise county.

Have there been reports of meth heads stealing copper wire from any utility company or eletric poles near you?

Blown transformers, wind crossed wires, almost all things high voltage-electrical will blow with a greenish bluish glow. Copper will burn green, while aluminum will burn bluish-white. My dad is a 36 year journeyman lineman. If you were in western texas, my area, I would explain away the reddish glow to dust storm, or static discharge, but in your area, which I believe to have much more vegetation, it would be harder to explain.

Have you noticed more plane/jet traffic in the night sky lately? I have seen a lot of low-flying craft lately that I've never seen before. One of which was red/orange in color, very small with no strobes. It would have been impossible to see were it not lit up by the two escort planes.

It might not be related, or mere coincidence, but after it passed over the processing plant that I manage, our electronic sorters went berzerk.

Just keep your eyes on the skys. Not for the little green dudes, its our stuff, or it would be engaged instead of escorted.

I firmly believe it was a UFO. Iv seen red ones fly by my in total silence at dark and they can glow reddish or even a orange color. A mother ship may have flew by and its anti proton generator may have cause the power outage. I must warn you thoe the red and or orange glowing UFOs are the dangerous ones see humanity the same way a farmer would look at his herd of cows. Also they usually are the ones involved in abductions. But don't not fear them. Humans have a hidden power that they can not handle. A awake person knows it.

More than likely, the street lights are controlled by a photocell (like on a security night light) and the brief flash triggered them into going off until that same sensor rediscovered that it was still night and turned the lights on again. That sequence happens a lot with lightning storms.

A little update:

Yesterday I asked a few customers if they had any power problems the previous night and most of them said yes. A few of them even said they too saw the red bright flash of light right before the street lights went off. As far as any sound goes, none of them said they heard anything out of the ordinary.

On an interesting side note:

I went to dinner with a friend last night, she lives in a town not too far from me and I told her of the strange red flash of light. Now my friend is not a believer in the paranormal, even though she and I witnessed a very strange UFO last year that even she couldn't explain, but she had her own story to tell of a strange sight she witnessed on the night in question.

She lives in a town that's about 15 miles from me. She said that as she was driving to go see her boyfriend at his house she noticed a strange light above one of the power plants that surrounds our entire area (the Beaumont, Texas area is riddled with power plants throughout). She said she knew it wasn't a star or planet cause it was too bright and too close to the power plants. It also couldn't be a plane because it was too low and flying above the power plants is restricted, plus the object was completely stationary. According to her the ball of light hovered there and grabbed her attention and she said she had no idea what she was seeing, but that it was weird that she saw that on the night I saw the red flash of light. I asked her if she knew about what time and she said it was about 8:30ish. I saw the bright red flash of light and the loss of street lights at roughly 10:10ish, since we are usually out of the store by 10:15 and it was only a matter of minutes before that.

Not sure if there is a connection but I do find it weird she spots a UFO of some sort above a power plant even if it is about 15 miles from where I saw the red flash of light. I'm not sure where else to investigate on this except maybe call the city of Orange and find out if they know of anything on the matter. I'm also debating as to whether or not to contact MUFON on the subject, but since I'm not entirely sure if it was UFO matter I don't know if they would investigate or even take my claim as anything except speculation. It is weird and I don't believe in coincidence, but I am open to a matter of a rational explanation if there is any.