Second witness confirms unusual light sightings over northern Puget Sound

[Emily]

xhttp://www.whidbeynewstimes.com/news/199064381.html
Unexplained lights leave South Whidbey retired civil engineer with questions

xhttp://www.whidbeynewstimes.com/news/199618741.html
Marysville woman confirms South Whidbey lights

 

[Tonka]

Re: Second witness confirms unusual light sightings over northern Puget Sound

Perhaps it was some sort of Earthquake Lights?

1 home destroyed in Washington landslide; 33 more isolated or threatened; residents evacuated
Published March 27, 2013
Associated Press
COUPEVILLE, Wash. ? *Whidbey Island authorities say one home has been severely damaged by a landslide that has isolated or threatened 33 more homes in a community overlooking Puget Sound about 50 miles north of Seattle.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/2...33-more-isolated-or-threatened/#ixzz2OlwB7dSq

 

[Emily]

Re: Second witness confirms unusual light sightings over northern Puget Sound

Thanks for pointing out this story, Tonka! I heard a geologist on the radio today say that this slide was generated at a very deep level - subsea, actually, unlike the typical landslides here. The area at risk may extend for two miles, unfortunately. (One news source even reported that the day before the slide, a couple of geologists were looking at the area.)

So maybe the building stresses were able to generate the lights. Here's a comparison of what was seen on March 16th in Puget Sound to one of several phenomena recorded in the months prior to the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake:

Seen by Mr. Johnson from the western side of Whidbey in the sequence reported in the excellent article by Justin Burnett in the Whidbey News Times:

• A steady, orange light hovering over Marrowstone Island
• That light was quickly joined by several more and they all began to make their way across Puget Sound.
• More lights were then seen over Whidbey Island, somewhere between Bush Point Lagoon Point.
• Two of the lights flew over their neighborhood
• A total of seven objects were reported

The article about the Marysville sightings the same night included video footage of an orange light matching Mr. Johnson's description. They were at a low altitude and moving, as the lights Mr. Johnson saw were at times.

Now here is an excerpt from a paper about the L'Aquila lights:
http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/967/2010/nhess-10-967-2010.pdf

Fire balls were observed several months before the main
shock on 6 April. As with foreshock activity which started
to increase in October 2008 (Pondrelli, 2010), reports of fire
balls started in the summer of 2008 and increased in number
till the end of March 2009. Marcelli Gabriella from Poggio
Picence observed a ball of light toward Monte Ocre, about
06:15–06:30 LT at the beginning of March 2009. That morning,
it was still dark and a light was seen along the flank
of the mountain. It was bigger than a street light, the luminous
sphere was yellowish orange. This light remained
midway up the mountain and then it suddenly moved up to
the mountain top and then disappeared behind it. The mountain
profile was visible because it was completely covered in
snow. Another 25 bright spherical bodies were sighted above
the historical center of Aquila, around Roio hill, near Preturo
and Pettino, Collebringioni, Tempera, Bagno, above San
Demetrio, Corvo Mountain, near Passo delle Capannelle, inside
the Celano gorges, near Popoli and Alba Fuciens. Their
white, yellow, orange or red lights were not bright.
Their diameters ranged from a few centimeters to one meter. In
four cases, they appeared in groups of two to four spheres.
In at least eight cases, globular lights were seen moving at
low velocity and in one case at high velocity. Several photos
and videos were collected which documented the phenomena,
see Figs. 2 and 3. Figure 2 is a photogram of a
video recorded on a MOTOROLA RAZR V3i mobile. It was
captured from Madonna della Strada towards Preturo Airport
(East), initially the luminous ball fell from the sky with fast
movements and then it remained suspended above the ground for more
than 30 minutes...

Source:
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 10, 967–978, 2010
www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/967/2010/
doi:10.5194/nhess-10-967-2010
© Author(s) 2010. CC Attribution 3.0 License.
The earthquake lights (EQL) of the 6 April 2009 Aquila earthquake,
in Central Italy
C. Fidani
Dipartimento di Fisica, Universit´a di Perugia, Via A. Pascoli, Perugia, Italy :tiphat:

Here's a screen capture from a local television story that shows how massive the slide was:
http://www.king5.com/news/local/andslides-damage-threaten-homes-Whidbey-Island-200244441.html

There are photos at the link. It's a miracle nobody was injured considering how sudden the slide was and that it occurred during the night. Even the man whose home slid down got out, though he couldn't drive away since the road had separated. I think 17 homes had to be evacuated by boat.

Even if the lights are related, since they were seen 10-11 days prior to the slide, they wouldn't be useful in evacuation planning. I hope they find a relatively precise way to predict movement since such a large area might be unstable.