Electyric Pylon Sparks

[Exige77]

I was in Italy last night. It was a hot and very humid evening. Where I was, there are a "lot" of electricity pylons. It was dusk and I was on the motorway. I saw what looked like a huge (very bright and loud) bolt of lightning junmping from one of the cables to it's neighbour right in front of me.

Anybody else seen or heard of this before ?

Ex77

[sadako]

Not heard of this before. I would imagine that if there was enough moisture in the air it might decrease the resistance of it enough to do this briefly, particularly if there is a storm brewing and causing the air to become ionised/corona discharge/etc...

[DrTre]

Typical Italian electrics really.

[phumy]

Its caused by dirt and dust on the lines and insulators (dollys), the amount of current flowing at the time and the humidity in the atmosphere, if the conditions are right then they can light up really big at times. We clean our 500kV transformers at least once a year because of this phenomenon

[davido140]

DrTre said:

Typical Italian electrics really.

[Neil_H]

It's just like the gap on a spark plug on a bigger scale. The weather conditions will probably have changed the electrical conductivity of the air.