I’m on the trail of a mystery. Maybe you can solve it.
This morning, around 6:45 AM, I was in my daughter’s room. My wife and daughter were on the bed, we were all laughing, usual stuff.
I was facing her bed, which is why I was looking out her window into the back yard (due East). That’s when I saw a blinding flash and heard a noise like the muffled boom of a cannon (like someone shot a cannon off at a distance of about 75 to 100 yards).
Now, there is a transformer on an electric pole in the yard behind our yard. It sits about 25 feet up in the air. However, I really think the flash was below that and closer and to the right ( which would put it outside our pool screen cage, between our house and the neighbor’s house).
So, I ran downstairs and outside. There was no burning ozone smell, which I’d associate with the transformer blowing up or any kind of electrical short. There was no hole in the pool screen that I could see. There were no burn marks on the lawn.
And just to show I’m not crazy, my neighbor next door showed up in half his Sheriff’s Deputy uniform, because his wife had also seen the flash. We looked at the transformer as well as we could in the thin light of dawn, and it looked just fine. The leaves wrapped around it weren’t smoking. Also, there was no power surge inside the house when the flash of light/cannon sound hit.
My neighbor didn’t see the flash. He seems to think it’s the transformer, because “what else could it be.”
We told my 7-year-old son that it was a ghost pirate setting off a cannon. He likes pirates. He’s not buying it though.
So, was it …
1) Transformer blowing up (in a way that causes no harm to engulfing foliage), but either reflecting in a way to make me think it was down and to the right, or otherwise fooling me.
2) The crack of dawn
3) Ghost pirates with cannon
4) A rift in the space-time continuum opening up. This is my favorite so far. I admit to looking around for 
dinosaurs, a la the TV show “Primeval,” in the area where the flash/boom occurred. At work, when I recounted this story at work, one of my co-workers did a very good impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger rising from the ground after coming through the time window in “Terminator.” So, maybe we’re on to something, LOL.
5) Something else? What else could it be?
Any ideas? I also didn’t see Scooby-Doo and his friends wandering around, so that rules out Old Mr. Jenkins and his scheme to recover the loot he buried in my backyard.
This is going to bother me all weekend unless I can figure it out.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I have 4 possibilities.
1) Earthquake. They often happen at dawn/dusk, they can rumble and boom, and it may have shook the transformer to create a large spark. Check with http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/
2) Lightning. A small lightning bolt that struck the ground and not anything tall - did any of your household appliances or electronics start having trouble? Was there precipitation within 30 miles?
3) Small Meteor
4) Sonic Boom.
5) Swamp Gas.
I think you saw and heard the first sign of the markets crashing!
A rift in the space-time continuum opened up in front of you, yet you wondered how you got out-tweeted this morning?
Hi Sean,
Maybe it was Hanky Pancky Bernanke and his fancy new electronic printing press…..he must have been flying by in his helicopter when he turned it on and then……Shazamm!!!! It is so powerful, even he could barely control it!!! He must have been dropping cash like crazy in your neighborhood…..don’t worry if you didn’t fnd any yet, I’m sure he’ll be back…..
By the way, you guys are the best–thanks for your updates and all you do to help educate regular Americans like me and to help us navigate this treacherous minefield called investing today. Have a great weekend!
One might say gunfire, but that’s more like a cracking sound - anyway, your neighbor (with his experience and training) would pick up on that right away.
Paranormal is fun to consider, but I think it was a large backfire in the distance, or perhaps a sonic boom -something of that nature, going off precicely as the sun broke over the east (assuming it was a clear morning.) One in a million, just like laughing with your family first thing in the morning.
This is why we work.
John Egan
You know, considering that the rainstorm from the night was just ending, lightning may be a great answer. Except I think it would be louder, wouldn’t it?
I like that explanation, with the exception that you reported no ozone odor. Typically, a strike that close would produce a tangible amount of ozone in the yard…
You may have provided the answer when you said the plants growing on the transformer — at the top of it there is a LOT of voltage: tens of thousands and lots of AMPS when one of the plants got near enough, it ARCED over making a big noise and flash but not long enough to make anything smoke.