What Was Up With That Giant Blue and Green Flash Over the Neighborhood Last Night?

While I was out “getting tacos” around 2 a.m. last night, the sky lit up with this wild blue and green flash.  I'm not talking fireworks either, but an odd, pulsing glow that consumed everything.

At first I thought I must've got some bad meat in my taco, but then the power went out and everyone else around also seemed to notice it.  The general consensus was either that Richmond Chevron refinery was up to no good again or aliens were waging war with Fremont, so I went to bed.

Turns out we were all wrong, just some drunk driver nailing a telephone pole near SF General:

Comments (2)

I didn’t see any flash yesterday but I saw 4 this morning around 6 am. A few months back when we had that crazy lightning storm, I was chatting with my brother who was waiting for his flight at SFO heading home to LA. I was looking out (from 26th and Guerrero) at the storm when lightning lite up the sky SSE. At nearly the same moment my brother said lightning had just struck directly over the airport and had startled several people. The incident gave me a good perspective of where the airport was in relation to the view from my apartment. The green flashes seemed to be in the very same vicinity but certainly not over one area. 2 flashes seemed to be from the same source, but the other two were further E - not by much but noticeably from another source.

Saw it from a plane on the way back from Toronto on the decent into Richmond. Our plane was up around 8,000ish feet. I have seen the Chevron plant in Burnaby do the emissive lighting thing before. This was not the same, it was on then off, one flash. Took a few pictures after, from the plane, no sign of any emission after looking at the images. Who knows.