Subj: *** WHAT HAPPENED IN PORTLAND OREGON? *** Date: 10/28/99 7:12:03 AM Pacific Daylight Time Dear Kent, Hello from Portland, Oregon and kudos to you for a wonderfully informative site. It has become a daily ritual to check for updates and have turned a number of my like-minded friends on to it. Something odd happened here early this morning (Thursday Oct. 28th) and I am wondering if you received other related reports. At around 1am, our power went out for about 2 hours. We were having a fairly robust windstorm, so I figured a line must have went down. I went outside to see if it was just our line or if the rest of the block was powerless. When I was outside, after noticing the whole blocks power was out, I noticed that it was as bright as morning outside, like 6am or so, but not 1! My wife was getting ready for bed, but I asked her to come outside to take a look and she, too, was shocked. The whole sky was bright and we could make out each others facial features clearly. Now, I know that the moon was full a couple days ago, but this was brighter than the night of the full moon or any night I have seen in my 31 years. It was the brightest I have ever seen outside at night, anyway. It looked like it does when the sun is just about to come up, but not quite showing yet. But wait, there's more... When our power went down, I had work to finish on my computer. Wanting to know whether I should wait it out or call it a night, I called our utility, Pacific Power and Light. On the message it said: 'Power was out in the "Portland area" and the cause was unknown, but being investigated.' As I mentioned earlier, we were having a windstorm, so I figured it was a no-brainer, a downed line, right? Wrong! When I called a half hour later they had an update saying it was a : "locked out feeder" at the Killingsworth Substation. Now, I'm not sure what a 'locked out feeder' means, but it made sense that our streets power, and immediate area, was out, as the Killingsworth Substation is near my house. Then this morning I hear that most of Portland was out of power (still is, as of this writing, according to the radio, but ours has been on since 3am). I know all of Portland does not run off of our substation, and there was no mention of other local problems on the recording (the other problems they did mention were on the coast). What's up? Did we get smacked with a solar event (CME)? It has all the ingredients... bright sky, power outages, etc. Did anything else strange happen here during that time, that you know of? By the way, when the power kicked back on, and I went to look at the sky again, I noticed it was still bright, but not as bright. An hour later it was the way I would expect it to be on any normal morning at 3am, dark. Sorry to write such a long letter, but I just have to know what's going on. Thankyou for your time and I plan on sending a small token of my appreciation to you within the next month or so, for all the hard work and dedication you put to create a must-see web site. Let me know if you find out anything, either by return e-mail or on the orbit page, as I will keep an eye out. A faithful Seeker,