Some Bay Area Residents Report Mysterious Flashes In The Sky During Napa Quake

sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com ^ | August 27, 2014 12:11 AM | Betty Yu

[BenLurkin]

Transformers blowing?

[HangnJudge]

Piezoelectric phenomenon?

[Michael.SF.]

LSD flashbacks?

[yarddog]

I know very little about earthquakes but I am sure I have read somewhere that they often cause that phenomena.

[BobL]

Try again:

I’m not sure it means anything, but what if it does?

[HangnJudge]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light

[DBrow]

There are lots of reports from Japan about this. If you crush rock in s press, you get flashes of light. My best guess is triboelectricity or a piezoelectric effect.

[NormsRevenge]

Yup.. piezoelectric effect, quartz when compressed or stressed can cause a discharge, sounds similar to a St Elmo like event

[JRandomFreeper]

"Green flashes, not associated with lightning" is something sometimes heard on storm-spotter nets. High winds or other disturbances can cause transformers to blow up when they get beat nearly to death from debris or hitting the ground.

So that's a valid observation.

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

/johnny

[HandyDandy]

The first time I ever heard of this earthquake and blasts of light phenomenon was while reading about the Shroud of Turin. It was suggested as one possible explanation for how the image got on the cloth.

[capydick]

And it wasn’t a transformer blowing up or UFOs.

This sentence puts UFO's on the same possibility scale as transformers blowing up.

By the way - transformers don't blow up - they just die.

[Parley Baer]

“Transformers blowing?

Exactly. I saw a guy being interviewed on TV and he reported watching the transfromers blow up around town.

[Figment]

“Piezoelectric phenomenon?”

I think that is basically what it is. I heard about this from relatives who were in a large one around Eureka CA around 1980

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

It seems to me that all of that rock rubbing against each other would cause massive static electricity build-up between the Earth and the atmosphere. Seems almost like common sense to me.

[backwoods-engineer]

Almost certainly a piezoelectric or triboelectric phenomenon.

[x1stcav]

Blowing their Depends?

If they were ready for the end it wouldn’t frighten them so much.

[fidelis]

During the Northridge quake, I was at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory high on a mountain overlooking the entire San Fernando Valley watching it all unfold. There were transformers blowing up every place you looked.

[realcleanguy]

HAARP. Well, maybe. There has been a lot of speculation about this device. And some folks have witnessed the lights from it. There were flashes of lights in China a couple of years ago the night before an 8 magnitude earthquake, and some reported lights before the 9 magnitude in Chili a few years ago.