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As soon as it's dark I'm going back to that site to see the difference.

Wow! Anyone not familiar with the outline of North America could be forgiven for thinking that there's another huge bay there!

This photo has been called a fake on another site. Do you know where it came from? If not I will try and verify, and get back to you.

A pretty lousy fake at that.

What is the blob of black extending out over the Atlantic ocean?

Why is the blackout area BLACK, when dark land and water areas are various shades of dark blue?

Yup... If you can believe Snopes it's a fake. Their description makes sense.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/blackout.asp

Barbara Mikkelson at Snopes seems to make extra effort to preserve their credibility, including updates and occasional corrections/retractions as necessary.


[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 08-25-2003).]

If I wanted to make a fake blackout picture like this, I would, using say Photoshop, select the appropriate area with the lasso tool, feather it a little, and adjust down the contrast not to zero but to around 5% and adjust down the brightness to that of the land in northern Canada. To simulate car lights and emergency lighting in the blackout areas.

Somewhat related: http://www.eypmcf.com/Critical_Power_Executive_Summary_EYP_MCF.pdf

This may sound kind of silly... and straight out of the X Files
(and a little touch of Dale Gribble ...)
but I first thought the problem was Induced Currents from intense Solar Flares, causing transient surges and other fun things.

Believe this happened once before on the East Coast, and killed power for many hours across several states - including New York.

Feel free to fire away with straight jacket jokes if needed

Bjarney, does this sound feasable? (not the straight jacket ...)
And if possible, would this either cause or assist in a Sub Sync Resonance situation going really bad?

Possible to throw excessive levels of Reactive Currents (or true power currents even) between Transformers?

Would something like this also interrupt or otherwise knock off-line the PoCo's Carrier Current monitoring and / or control systems?

Just hanging out with Fox Mulder...
Scott35

Here is a link that relates to the solar flare thing. I will try and 'unlock' it to answer your question.
http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7453&start=0