White Flashes of Light in the Sky?

It's not always lightning but frequently it IS an electrical phenomenon, of a man-made nature. Faults on overhead HV feeders at night are spectacular and the light is visible from many tens of miles away over the horizon against the night sky even when there is no cloud due to particles in the atmosphere. Most such feeders are equipped with auto-reclose relays which attempt to re-energize the feeder some seconds after the initial trip to avoid nuisance call-outs of crews to patrol the feeder looking for the source of the fault when it was an animal or a tree branch etc making momentary contact that caused the fault. Some feeders in very remote locations have multiple shot reclosers (attempt to 'blast' the fault off the line) and so avoid calling a crew out in the middle of the night unnecessarily to locate the problem.

A very 'ordinary' explanation I know but it happens a lot and it's so brief that you need to be looking in exactly the right place at the right time to see it. Of course, if you're actually monitoring a modern transmission & distribution system via SCADA you get an idea of just how common transient faults are.

About 5-6yrs ago there was a 12mth period where these bright flashes were many for me ... I didn't even have to be outside 'sky-watching' to see them ... I could be inside reading / writing / on the computer etc. and the sky would light the whole garden up so that it couldn't be missed ... the best way I can describe this is to say it was like someone standing outside taking photographs with a powerful flash.

The flashes were completely random over the 12mth period for example there may be a night with one or two flashes ... then a week or two could pass without any ... followed by several consecutive nights with multiple flashes.

There were a couple of nights where there must have been around a dozen such flashes throughout the evening.

Then they just stopped happening ... since then I've seen a couple of these random flashes but nothing like the previous occurances.


(I live on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors in the UK).

Woody

On Wednesday night i was going inside the house,and i was looking up just before i entered the kitchen+saw this big white lightflash in the sky,it flashed twice,and it looked like it was in the same spot,ENE point-well i had to go to an animated gif site,cause YT is'nt working well for us lately-its the closest i could find.



Obviously,none of the little tiny black spots,disregard those,like i said,a gif was the closest i could find-just picture the flash itself against a plain black sky.

I have seen flashes in the sky for years. But not point source flashes, I'm talking about general non focused brief illumination of the entire sky.

Others I have been with have seen them also. In Scotland, wales, midlands and the south. I have only seen them in the middle of nowhere where it.is very dark with virtually no light pollution as the overall effect is very dim......but its never just one. Once it went on for hours.


Not sure what they could be

I'm in Ireland and last night I was messing with a laser beam in the night time (as you do). The sky was completely clear of clouds or fog. The stars were more visible than usual. All of a sudden I saw a huge section of the sky light up relatively slowly (compared to a lightning flash). It was in the North Eastern side of the sky so I'm leaning towards the notion that it might be something related to the Northern Lights even though it is very very unlikely to see them this far south.

Heres where things take a paranormal turn. The night before I was at it again with the laser beam, running it through the sky when it suddenly shortened over a wide seemingly invisible object about 15 metres off the ground. I kept moving the beam over the area wondering and remarking on the strangeness of this. My friend was with me as confirmation that I am not losing my mind and we were both sober. When I shined it back in the area the laser shone on to infinity as though whatever was blocking the beam had moved out of the way.

Does anybody have any thoughts on these accounts as frankly I am lost for an explanation. Are the two events linked? If this was on TV I would say that the object was a cloaked UFO and the flash the night after was possibly the same UFO telling me to stop playing with that ridiculous laser.

Hey, I know this is a very old post... But finally I can talk about this topic with someone else.. I know exactly what you are talking about, this light has a contrast of pure white, able to light everything up around you even a whole neighborhood around you... Apparently, I was in the same situation as you a few years back, 2012/2013..

I was outside with a few friends, we were all hanging out, outside around 11-12 at night. Suddenly out of nowhere with no explanation, A very VERY white bright light with a super high contrast just as you said as a Camera flash just lit up. This light seemed to not hurt my eye, but lit up the whole street for 1-2 seconds. No noise or anything. This light was able to light up my street which is probably 2 football fields long if not longer.. I woiuld love to see the picture you have,

please contact me at [email protected]

i look forward to the picture if you have it.

-joe

Twice in my life ive seen the entire nigt sky light up & not like some flash had gone off, flash usually bounces against other reflective surfaces such as buildings or cars, not these times! but white light replacing every sections of the night sky. Weird..like the flashes had come from space or something like that, yep from space then downwards & huge, have no other explanation for it.

11:40 last night saw a massive flash as quick as a camera flash in the sky to the east, bright white, no thunder and the skies were clear and it didn't seem to come from any single point or source, I live in Anlaby, East Yorkshire

a reply to: zappa4president

If you know the exact time of the flash, you could try enquiring with the local transmission & distribution authorities to see if they recorded any overhead HV faults at that time. The protection operations should be remotely monitored and recorded so they'll have a permanent record of any such events probably accurate to the millisecond with any auto-recloser attempts as well.

I've been involved in the transmission business and witnessed a number of these faults caused by clashing conductors, falling trees, birds/animals etc coming into contact with the HV conductors. The flashes are dramatic and visible for many miles at night, even from across the horizon some 15 miles away.

I saw it.......same as your description out of the corner of our eye....cool ha

I'm north of Dallas...where were you. My next door dude came out and I told him that I'm a pilot and just saw something I've never seen before.....and I'm an iridium flare expert this is different big time.....a fast flash really bright with the apparent diameter way bigger than an iridium. then a full 12 seconds till the next which was half the brightness then 12 seconds.....a bright one.....on a heading of SW by S, faster sky track than any satellite.......a flare develops it's brilliance, these were slower than a camera flash.....about a 12th of a second
in Dallas it was 50 degrees up moving to 44 degrees above the horizontal

Texas

a reply to: chrismicha77

I saw it....yes a strobe exactly, did you see the strobe bigger diameter than usual....like very large diameter strobe compared to normal