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R e :   M o n t r e a l   -   N o v e m b e r   7 ,   1 9 9 0   
 Received : 03/03/08  Don LEDGER   
 
 

I would like to ask how you have dealt with the problem of these pool lights being underwater, probably to a depth of between 5 or 8 feet.....  read more 

 
 
 Received : 04/15/10  M.R.   
 
 

In April 2010 CAELESTIA was contacted by M.R., a university student from Montreal who prefers to remain anonymous....  read more 

 
 
 Received : 06/21/10  Benoit LAUZON   
 
 

First of all, let me compliment you on a very well put website!

About the Montréal lights seen on that November night in 1990:

I remember attending a computer science class in Montréal that evening, and our teacher had told us about this story (it was unfolding at that time, probably it was mentioned on a live radio or TV show). When I drove back home (Ville de Lorraine at the time, on the north shore), as I was on chemin de la Grande-Côte heading west (it must have been near or past 22:00h), the sky on my left side (direction of Montréal) lit up very brightly in a blue hue twice (there was a pause of a few seconds between the flashes). At first, I thought that an electrical transformer exploded in a street nearby, but there was no sound. When the second flash came, I noticed that the blue light extended pretty widely, and it didn't seem localized. It looked much more like lightning, only bluer, and lasted a few seconds each.

That's it as far as what I saw with my own eyes. The next morning, my mother woke me up and told me to turn on my radio. There were hotlines and several people describing what they had witnessed from several areas on and around the island (mostly bright lights in the cloudy sky). One of my mother's coworkers also mentioned that her young boy kept bugging her about a "spaceship in the sky" as she was driving near the Olympic stadium that evening. She said she thought he was talking about the stadium itself (looks more like a toilet seat to me), so she never bothered looking.

My views: Unless all of this is coincidental and/or the testimonies of sightings far from the hotel area where false, maybe more than the swimming pool’s spotlights where at play.

The weather was very particular that night, and I'm wondering if the source of all this could be of electrical nature, like static charge accumulating in the clouds? And I'm wondering, that perhaps, the flashes I saw where the clouds finally discharging, putting an end to this light show (although pretty unusual for lightning at that time of year)?

Anyway, this is my little anecdote of strange lights in a November sky, hoping it might be of slight interest.

Sincerely,

Benoit LAUZON
Montréal, Canada


Our reply :

We are always delighted to receive new testimonies about old and widely discussed UAP reports.

With regard to Mr. LAUZON’s suggestion that the flashes he witnessed were perhaps cloud-to-cloud lightning, below is a summary of the meteorological data that can be found on p. 21 of the HAINES & GUENETTE report:

The cloud ceiling was 3,400 feet between 9:30 and 11;00 p.m., with a layer of scattered clouds at 3,000 feet. At 10:00 p.m. the clouds were developing into very opaque, thick snow clouds. At Dorval airport light snow began to fall at 10:21 and continued for several hours.

According to meteorologist Joel BARTLETT, who supplied HAINES & GUENETTE with most of the weather data for their 1992 report "no lightning was reported at any time in the entire region".

So this would rule out lightning as an explanation for the blue flashes, or at least make this possibility unlikely.

As for the flashes being caused by explosions from an electrical transformer, there is this on p. 5 of the report drafted by HAINES & GUENETTE:

"A power failure (hors tension) was experienced on November 7, 1990 between 11:08 and 11:50 at the Longue-Pointe Military Base (LPMB). The base is fed by a 12,000 volt lead from the Hydro-Quebec Longue-Pointe power station. It is the only one which broke down". (We assume that the authors were referring to p.m. when they wrote "11:08" and "11:50".)

Video mages of electric arcs and switch failures can be viewed in this YouTube video (and related videos).

Is it possible that the blue flashes witnessed by Mr. LAUZON were light effects caused by a breakdown of a transformer at this military base? Longue Pointe is at a distance of about 20 km (11 miles) from the chemin de la Grande-Côte. Visibility on November 7, 1990 was 15 miles, so that would not be a problem.

We asked Mr. LAUZON if it would be possible to provide us with estimates of the elevation of the blue hue and the horizontal angle subtended by the phenomenon. His response is published further down this page as a separate visitor’s response.

Reflected images from lights sources that are not, or only partly shielded on top are known to cause reports of strange lights in the sky from time to time (these can be pillar-shaped mirrored images in translucent ice-crystal clouds - see our photo gallery on lightpillars - or, more commonly, circular areas of light on the base of opaque stratiform or cumuliform clouds - see this example. In the Montreal case, the snow cloud that developed at about the same time the lights over the Bonaventure Hotel disappeared, may have provided an excellent screen for poorly shielded lights to reflect upon. Perhaps atmospheric reflections can also account for the "spaceship in the sky" mentioned by the boy who was in the car with his mother driving near the Olympic Stadium. Photos of mirrorred images from spotlights bordering a sports stadium can be found in this case example.

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 Received : 07/01/10  Benoit LAUZON   
 
 

Thanks for your detailed reply. I had forgotten about the Longue Pointe power failure. If indeed a transformer arced there, it must have been a big one.....  read more 

 
 
 Received : 01/12/11  Stéphane TURCOTTE   
 
 

While looking for more information about the November 7, 1990 events in Montreal, I found your very interesting web site. .....  read more 

 
 
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