I believe most of the folks have it correct, she happened to be driving by the wire when it arced. I work for a utility company and have seen several arcs in my time. The same thing also happened to me several years ago. I’m driving down the road when all at once an incredible bright light occured and a loud sound that can only be described as a loud ray gun sound from a 1950’s sic-fi movie. I stopped my car to see what was going on when I saw the 13Kv line running along the road had arced. It had nothing to do with the woman’s car.
It is likely the power line itself flashing over. It would be the same energy in a blast as a transformer and the car was under a power line when it was seen.
http://stormhighway.com/powerflash.shtml has some videos of power line flashovers. All it takes is a large bird in the wrong spot or too much sag from line heating combined with some wind. (Transmission lines are operated hot from time to time on purpose when there is a river crossing somewhere in their path in the winter to melt ice buildup on the line and often run hot in the summer due to load and ambient temperature.)
A lightning strike a dozen miles away can also cause a flashover. Often the flashover is near the strike but there could be a weak insulator far from the strike that will take the path to ground. (Lightning traveled 10’s of thousands of feet through air, an extra mile or two through metal would not make a difference to it.)
Transmission line flashover is common enough to be why utility workers under power lines keep their feet together and ‘shuffle step’ when they walk under them. Transmission lines flash over from time to time and they see it firsthand. By keeping their feet together the ground potential between their feet is lower than if they were say 3 feet apart and during a flash over current would go up one leg and down the other in preference to ground.
Sally, you are not alone! No, I don’t mean it was aliens. 
This happened to us, too! My husband was driving as I rode in the front passenger seat. Just as we passed a transformer on a small town road, we simultaneously heard a loud buzzing soud, saw a bright light even though it was a sunny day, and felt a vibration that seemed to envelop the car. It was so alarming that my husband immediately slowed down to assess if there was any damage to our car. He did not see the source from the driver’s side, but as it happened, I saw that the source was the electrical transformer on the side of the road. I looked back as he slowed the car and saw that it was still shooting sparks. The car seemed to be fine, so we drove away. It definitely was a jolting experience!
Power lines can cause radio interferrence that is noticible when listening to an FM station, but I believe on this day Sally was listening to an AM station which would cause the static interferrence to sound just like an electric buzz and be very loud.
There are two parts to the grid. The first is the high voltage lines that go from generators to the substations and between substations. These are on those high towers and voltages range from 115kV to almost a million volts. The other half is the distribution lines that go from the substations to the customers. They range from 2.4 kV to 19.92kV and these are the type of line that that Sally was probably near.
cont
Lightning may travel dozens of miles on the high voltage part of the grid, but not on the distribution system. There are lightning arrestors at various points along the line that will short overvoltage to the neutral line. The neutral line is grounded about every 200 yards.
cont.
In theory, that would be the maximum distance a lightning strike would go on a distribution line, however copper thieves are cutting the ground riser cables from the poles in many parts of the country.
All the talk about Faraday cages, etc., is fascinating, but I think there’s a simpler explanation. I think something shorted out the plugged in phone charger cable. That could explain the sound and the flash of light.
When I was in college we went skiing in Utah on spring break. Shortly before we left I saw a show showing the phenomenon of static electricity in areas where there is seismic activity and the theory was that the static electricity escapes as balls of lights as a result of the earth’s plates shifting and grinding. So on the way back from our ski trip it was very late and I witnessed a large ball of light hovering over the hood of the car and then it “flew” away. After a few suspenseful minutes the driver and I blurted out “did you see that?” the sleeping passengers awoke and claimed we must have been high. An hour later all the cars of our group ended up at the same gas station and it turned out another girl had seen the same show and the gas attendant confirmed there had been scientists in the area measuring seismic activity that week! What an exciting end to a great week! Needless to say it felt wonderful to have our sighting validated. However, I believe the woman in New York heard the electrical and interference and some sort of bright reflection of the sun simultaneously. If it wasn’t a sunny day it could have been a ball of static electricity!
Ok. There are dozens of explanations here involving the wires / electrical system.
How many people drive daily by and under wires? Gazillons. You don’t hear of these things. Is it possible it was related to the wires? Sure, but I’d bet a nickel against it.
I was surprised that T&R didn’t suggest that she get evaluated for a temporal lobe seizure. Sounds and bright lights that no one else saw - that’s what came to mind for me. If there were a nidus irritating her gray matter the earlier it can be detected the better.
If ball lightening is being produced in Sally’s car it is a metoroligical (sp?) event and her car will be secretly whisked away in the inky black of night by undercover agents. Whoever can figure out how to recreate ball lightening will have a powerful tool in their arsenal.
Click and Clack, I originally hail from North Salem and actually worked at the Waccabuc Country Club way back when. Several years ago I was listening to your show and was pleasantly surprised to hear a caller from Waccabuc. (You got a laugh out of the town name then, too.) If my memory is correct, the caller described a very similar circumstance as Sally’s experience. Would it be possible to find this old call and compare the two? My guess would be that it aired between 2003 and 2006. (I actually thought for a moment that you aired an old show as I was listening to it…)
Sally, you have reminded me of an eerie summer night near Big Horn, Wyoming about 15 years ago. I was driving home in a relatively unpopulated area about 10 p.m in the dark. Suddenly the entire sky became brighter than daylight. As far as I could see, the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains were brighter than daylight, with a cold white and slightly blue color. It lasted for a few seconds. No storms were in the area and there were no lightening strikes; this lasted far longer than any lightening strike and covered an area as far as I could see. I don’t recall any power line issues, no sounds, nothing happened inside my pickup, just a massive brightening of the land and sky that was brighter than the sun. I was traveling with someone else (thank goodness) who validated what happened and was just as amazed as I was. To this day I have no explanation but have suspected a meteorologist might hold the answer.
Squirrels can crawl over the insulator that suspends the wire. If one part of their body touches the wire or metal at the end of the insulator and another part touches the metal on the other end of the insulator, their body is very likely to become a conductor. Electricity finds a way through their body to travel from the power line to ground. There’s a brief very bright flash and buzzing sound as the squirrel is vaporized. Less often, birds land on power poles and have wingspans long enough to touch two conductors, with the same result. Transformer and other power pole and power line problems are far less frequent than animals finding a way to conduct high voltage. The caller said it was a clear day and saw no other problems. I’ll bet she witnessed the end of a squirrel. It happens all the time.
This is definitely an electrical issue. Click and Clack, consult with a commercial electrical contractor, and they will be able to accurately describe what is going on, as several commenters here have. I’ve seen this phenomenon in my house (during a storm, luckily the uninterruptible power supply stopped it), and it’s some kind of electrical arc, essentially free-flowing electricity. There does not have to be a burn or flame, there was not in my case, and the arc was about 3 feet across. I have a client who is a commercial electrical contractor, and they have described this phenomenon to me since in the course of other business as very dangerous. She was probably lucky she was in her car. It might be impossible to pinpoint what exactly caused it that day, as it’s an electrical issue as I said, not specifically related to squirrels, or transformers, or some such. All those candidates are good ones though.
This lady experienced exploding head syndrome. Read about it at Cracked.com
This is related to the temporal lobe seizure mentioned by Steve314 above.
Hi guys. I think you probably heard most of the pieces of the probable scenario. Looking on Google Earth, I spotted a large substation/switchyard on the Old Post Rd in Waccabuc, along a route likely traveled by the caller. It’s only maybe 40 or 50 feet from the road. Such sites are home to many uninsulated, high-voltage (35,000 to 100,000V) lines, transformers, circuit breakers, etc. Sadly, many squirrels meet their demise trying to navigate these lines. As one of these hapless critters atempts to jump from one line to another, it will create a momentary short circuit, say of about 15,000 to 25,000 amps. This will last maybe one tenth of a second, and will generate an arc many times brighter than the sun. As such an event will cause huge currents to flow through the nearby distribution transformer, it will hum, kinda like an overloaded electric motor, except LOUD - probably audible for a quarter mile. So, inside a car traveling past the switchyard, the combination of flash and hum would be, I’m sure, enough to cause one to seek clean shorts afterwards. Even if the caller could not have seen the flash directly, the reflection off of surfaces inside the vehicle would have been intense. Such events would normally be logged by the power company, but would not necessarily have caused a power outage.
Now, for the more likely alien abduction scenario…
When lines cross a road and are not properly maintained, they can droop. Squirrels love crossing lines. If the lines droop enough and the squirrel makes contact with both, ZAP. For example:
And yes, it makes zzzz’ing noises and flashes of light. Give it a minute or so and you can smell it.
I have experienced that twice. The first time I experienced it was in a localized high wind and rain event here in Houston. I was driving home from the office. A super brilliant bright blue light completely enveloped me in my MR2 Spyder. My first thought was “OH CRAP, how many thousands of dollars is this going to cost me”. It seemed to have emanated from inside the car. But the car was still running, however all of the normal store signage and the like were no longer illuminated. There was a massive power failure.
The second time I saw that same brilliant light, a piece of heavy equipment touched a power line a couple of hundred yards from me. When that transformer blew, or maybe it was the transformer’s breaker, it created its own shadow in the middle of the day and I heard that classic “VVVVVPPTT” sound.
Yep, transformer blew or lines touched or arced across. That’ll light up like daylight! Accounts for the loud buzz too.