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From: torre@msa3b.UUCP (Patrick Torre)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: New Year's Eve idiocy: Plus Hawaiian Hurricanes!
Message-ID: <1507@msa3b.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jan 91 01:01:43 GMT
References: <4655@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM> <2525.2796c1e3@verifone.com>
Organization: Dun and Bradstreet Software, Inc., Atlanta, GA
Lines: 34

ed_l1@verifone.com writes:

>In article <4655@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM>, jeffw@midas.WR.TEK.COM (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>> I wondered - with so much powdered metal in many pyro formulas, and 
>> particulate matter (conductive metal oxides?) left after their explosion,
>> is it possible that a skyrocket of some sort exploding among the wires would
>> alter the conductivity of air enough to let such an arc happen?
>> 
>> 							Jeff Winslow

>In Hawaii, during hurricane Iwa in ('82?), we had high winds, lightning, 
>rain, and every once in a while a huge, no _*HUGE*_ green flash that lit
>up the entire island (I live on the windward side, they were coming over
>the mountains!)!  Later, the media informed us that they were, "transformer
>explosions," whatever THAT is....  And yes, we lost our electricity, for
>about a week. :-(

I dont remember the flashes from Iwa (I was eating Thanksgiving dinner),
but I do remember that several times that same year, while the sugar
cane was being burned, we had some incredible power outages (rolling
blackouts for weeks...) .  This whould happen every now and then when
the thick smoke whould rise into the High Tension wires,  I dont think 
we had any explosions, but the whole system couldnt take the rapid 
changes in load that occured when a whole generating station was 
effectively cut off from the power grid.  This seemed to cause a chain
reaction of generators blowing out.

or at least thats how I remember it. :-)
a lot of milk spoiled


-- 
Patrick Torre @ Dun and Bradstreet Software, Inc (404) 239-2061
{emory,gatech}!nanovx!msa3b!torre