Today has been so humid, it’s been hot and sticky even inside air-conditioned buildings. The weather service is predicting, in a rote way, the usual “chance” of isolated thunderstorms, another way of saying “we have no clue.” Last night’s “chance” knocked out power to 13,000 people.
As is typical, we had no storm or even a sprinkle in this part of town, though we did have a brief, brisk blow.
However, we did have a weird happening. Along about 9 or 10 p.m., a strange, loud electrical sound burst out just to the north of the Funny Farm, a kind of wwWWMRARMRMRMRMMMMWRMM. I could see a bright, orangey light through the curtains.
It wasn’t lightning — wrong color. Lightning’s blue in these parts. And the sound was definitely not thunder.
The dogs were alarmed. I didn’t think much of it.
But then about ten minutes later it happened again, and the flare was much brighter and then the power went out. I got up to look: absolutely no storm going on.
The noises sounded electrical, and I thought I could see a fire at the end of the street. And I thought the sound and flashes had come from the vicinity of Manny’s house.
Our tract has underground utilities. So if it was over by Manny’s place, then…???… It sounded like a big power surge — like this one.
But can a power surge be visible when the power lines are underground?
The surrounding tracts have overhead lines, so if a surge or a transformer malfunction occurred in one of them, it would have happened a little further away than Manny’s house.
I finally decided the “fire” was somebody’s headlights (or something) and went back to bed. The dogs remained disturbed for awhile, but after the power came back on, they settled down.
Strange night.
And right now it’s hot and sweaty in here even though the AC is pounding away. Enough. I’m going to bed, or maybe to bed down on the cool tile floors.
That’s one of the reasons desert dwellers have tile floors, after all…