What caused that strange power surge on Vancouver Island?
Lights flickered and surge protectors kicked in, but what was behind it?
If you live on Vancouver Island and your power flickered on Saturday night, you aren't alone. Puzzled residents took to social media to seek the cause of the interruption, which seemed to ripple across much of the island. Reports of loud noises or explosions also emerged.
One early frontrunner to take the blame was the anticipated geomagnetic storm that had been forecast to impact the atmosphere over the weekend. There are a few problems with that idea, though: Notably that it seems the storm hadn't even arrived at the time the power issues.
"There weren't any spikes in geomagnetic activity, which would indicate that the coronal mass ejection from the Sun had impacted the atmosphere," said The Weather Network's meteorologist and science writer Scott Sutherland. "It may be that the CME is traveling much more slowly than expected, or it may have largely slipped by Earth without hitting us."
Even if the expected solar storm had transpired, however, there's another problem with blaming it for a power interruption.
"Solar storms usually only have that kind of effect on long stretches of power lines, like those that run for thousands of kilometres from Hudson Bay to southern Quebec," says Sutherland.
SEE ALSO: How much electricity is there in a thunderstorm?
So what was the culprit?
After a bit of detective work, it seems the source was a generating station -- Island Generation -- owned by Capital Power. A spokesperson for B.C. Hydro confirmed to Weather Network meteorologist Tyler Hamilton that the facility experienced a "brief fault" in its transmission line on Saturday night, and that fault caused a bump in the overall system when the facility reconnected to the B.C. Hydro grid.
The facility is located in the same area that saw most of the reports of strange loud noises; another mystery solved.
The representative also added that this kind of event is extremely rare.
