There's been recently (last 2-3 weeks) lot of short 1-2min blackouts in the area where I live in Southern Finland. Apparently some homes in the area have had longer duration blackouts. Sometimes the lights just dim for a second, followed by blackout and sometimes not.
This is in itself is bit out of ordinary, but there could be several reasons for this, for example apparently there has been some grid maintenance project going on in the area, which could cause these short blackouts. People have been asking explantion from the electricity distributer, but have not got clear answer (based on social media comments).
But last friday evening something strange happened. I was outside smoking cigarette, when I saw flash of blue light somewhere above/beyond my field of vision. My first thought was that the outdoor lights were malfunctioning, so I started to observe them more closely (the lights may have dimmed before the flash). Then, about minute or two later a second flash happened, and I was now sure it came from somewhere above, from the sky, instead of the lights.
It resembled something like the blue/greenish spark that occurs between train pantograph and the wire during wintertime, or filaments in the plasma ball surrounded by blueish light. I only saw it for a quick second at time and not directly, so this description should be taken with a grain of salt.
So when I mentioned this to my wife, she told that other people had seen the same thing in the area. Here is some comments translated from the local FB group:
"What just happened here? The sky flashed three times and lights went out onwards from the supermarket".
"Same happened here, the whole sky flashed in blue".
"Lights flashed in our home two times".
"I was walking outside and saw two red flashes resembling fireworks. My child and his/her friends had seen four flashes; bright, blue, green and red, followed by really strange sound".
"We just saw two flashes followed by a strange humming sound. About 15min later we heard sound resembling gunshot, but unsure wether these are connected".
"Our tv screen flashed few times".
"There was this weird noise immediately followed by it".
"Last year I saw similar blue flash followed by electric blackout, also then there was no explanation found of the cause".
(We found some comments on the FB group from last January, where similar blue/green flash had been witnessed in the sky followed by blackouts).
The weather was really bad and it was dark, there had been snowing and heavy storm all day. After looking for most probably explanations, it seems that this could have been thundersnow, which is rare phenomenom, and is different from normal lightning, which could explain why people didn't recognize it as such, but it is observed few times a winter in Finland. The weather conditions seemed also to be right for this to happen. Though I'm not sure what's up with the ongoing Stranger Things effects with the lights going dim for a second sometimes, should I also start to prepare for battling with local window fallers
Although the videos I watched from thundersnow looked like being easier to recognize as a lightning, I'm still going to take this as the most probable explanation for now, unless there's any other ideas what it was? People clearly witnessed something flashing in the sky few times (some saw blue flash, others red or green), accompanied with strange, unusual sound (I didn't hear anything myself). With cosmic changes we can expect to see more rare and strange weather phenomenons, so whatever this was, seems to fall into this category.
