FOX 4 WFTX - Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Naples News, WeatherBright flashes of light in the sky
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A night sky suddenly erupting in color. The flashes go on for almost a minute, so bright that people in Cape Coral, Fort Myers Beach, and Sanibel can see them.
"I just thought it was a big party going on over there. I was like, 'woo hoo!'"
"I thought, 'no, this can't be the end of the world!'"
"I thought it was an explosion."
"I thought it was actually a plane that came down and crashed."
"I thought, 'hey this is it. This is the day.'"
It happened at around the same time as a major power outage on Sanibel. But LCEC hasn't confirmed if the two are related.
So I showed David Desportes, an engineer who works with power companies, the video on our website. He told me that the bright lights are probably from a failure at a substation, where companies transmit large amounts of power.
"Once the load gets shifted, it's sometimes too much for the next circuit and that can cause another shot and another flash, and then on and on," he said. "It can just be sort of a cascading effect."
A normal occurrence, he says, but an image many will never forget.
Pooja Lodhia
Reporter
