Transformer blowing?
 

I just had my power turn off for a brief moment...you know, off and on, but off long enough to turn off all the clocks in the house *sigh*. Anyway, there was a loud bang before the power went off, and it wasn't lightning. It's a little stormy, but there hasn't been any lightning. Was this a transformer? It really spooked me.

Almost certainly. Doesn't take a lightning strike to take one out. Our neighborhood loses 2 or 3 during primetime hours each year. Call the power company & let them know you're uneasy. They might confirm.

Yeah, transformer. And there was a brief outage while the system picked up the slack, as it's designed to....

...Unless you live where I live. If you live where I live, where @(*$# Pacific Gas and Electric can't keep the grid up to save it's life because it's too busy shipping corporate profits back to its unregulated parent company to invest in maintenance, after that first brief outage you get about 30 seconds of power from the backup transformers. Then there's a 50-50 chance that the backup system will fail, plunging you into darkness for 15 minutes to two hours.

Sounds like silicon valley. Loved those daily PG&E rolling brownouts.

Close. Santa Cruz.