Police Make Headway In Baltimore Co. Mystery (Strange explosions)

WJZ.com ^ | 4-28-08 | Derek Valcourt

[Renfield]

Video (including one of the strange flashes) is at the WJZ link.

By the way, WJZ's headline is a bit misleading. The only headway police have made is to rule out the most apparent possible causes.

[Redleg Duke]

My damned flux capacitor is acting up again!

[Tennessee_Bob]

God is zeroing His lightning bolt finger.

[Ben Mugged]

We get these all the time out in California. They are caused by illegal fireworks brought in from Mexico. A shell called a cannonade and it launches a shell 60 to 100 feet in the air. It produces a bright flash and a deafening boom. Seems too much a coincidence it occurs above a parking lot (good launching point).

[steve86]

The only headway police have made is to rule out the most apparent possible causes.

And we can rule out the possibility that a 1,000 ton asteroid has been crashing there every time this happens.

[saganite]

Just future folks moving back and forth through the time portal. Could be part of the temporal cold war but in any case when they find out their portal is creating such a ruckus they’ll move it somewhere else.

[4yearlurker]

If you listen real hard to the tape you can hear someone yelling:”Marty..Marty...Marty..” in the back round. Also I thought I heard something about gigawatts.

[SlowBoat407]

Someone must have gotten their hands on a case of “flash-bangs” and was lofting them over the parking lot.

[steve86]

My monitor explodes every time I try to play the video.

[Jet Jaguar]

Sounds like somebody tying an M-80 to a helium balloon.

[BallyBill]

Swamp Gas.

[stockpirate]

I sloved it this morning when I first read about this.

Some moron goes outside at that time and fires off a salute skyrocket.

[meatloaf]

I’d bet it’s a prank using some type of envelope/balloon filled with natural gas to get the height and some sort of fuse or igniter. Some kids have to be laughing their asses off.

[DBrow]

Aww, your’e no fun! It’s got to be more exotic than that.

Authorities have ruled out terrorism, though.

[saganite]

In the video the police rule out fireworks as the source.

[unkus]

“Sounds like somebody tying an M-80 to a helium balloon”

We used to do that. Or the perfect mix of aceteline and oxygen.

[steve86]

Looking at the video, it appears that the rise time and trail time of the flash is nothing like a fireworks explosion, and the lumen level is constant. It is like a square wave, on instantaneously, lit at a steady level (for a quarter second?), then off instantaneously.

[PLMerite]

It seems like it’s happened too many times for it to be some idiot with fireworks. But I won’t rule out anything (except maybe the asteroid). It’ll be interesting to find out what it really is - if they ever do.

[Williams]

No EVIDENCE of fireworks on the ground, sure sounds like a firework to me.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Build a mosque there! It’s an islamic holy place.