# We had a brownout earlier this evening

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-a-brownout-earlier-this-evening/914689>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [July 8, 2020, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-a-brownout-earlier-this-evening/914689 "2020-07-08T02:09:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-a-brownout-earlier-this-evening/914689/1 "2020-07-08T02:09:33Z")

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My neighborhood had a power outage for a couple hours earlier this evening, and for the last hour or so, my incandescent bulbs were “on”, but barely orange, as was the blue light on my computer screen. But nothing else! It was the weirdest thing.

Whatever happened, it appears to have been repaired now.

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**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-a-brownout-earlier-this-evening/914689/2 "2020-07-08T15:51:33Z")

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We had a power burp yesterday - just long enough to require me to reset most of the digital clocks in the house. My husband was in the middle of a teleconference on VOIP - so he was particularly thrilled with the burp. 😖

But such things are very rare here - our electric co-op is aces!

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**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-a-brownout-earlier-this-evening/914689/3 "2020-07-08T19:46:19Z")

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That happened in my condo building once during a major thunderstorm. As soon as somebody punched a call button for the elevator, the motor began running, but there wasn’t enough power to actually raise or lower the elevator car. Therefore the elevator motor kept running and running to the point where it started to smoke, setting off the fire alarms at about 2 in the morning. 😡

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**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-had-a-brownout-earlier-this-evening/914689/4 "2020-07-09T10:13:59Z")

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Side question: Is it still possible to see poster’s locations? I entered the thread out of curiosity and can’t find information on where these events occurred.