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That was a pretty impressive storm. I happened to be flying from Charlotte to Chicago that day, and we arrived at Ohare just after the main storm had gone through. Luckily it weakened as it went through the Chicago area. (It actually started well to the WNW of Chicago.) What got interesting was my commuter flight, somewhat later, out of Ohare. A sort of "ripple" / secondary wave formed behind the main storm, formed a nasty squall line that did much more damage in the immediate area than the main storm, and plowed through right at our departure time. We passengers were rush-rush-rushed onto our little Canada Regional Jet and we got out a few minutes early, just barely beating the squall line. It was kinda wild as we took off pointed right at the squall line, banked hard, bounced around pretty good for a minute or two, and then outran it. The cloud to ground lightning, as viewed from the air, and sometimes between breaks in the clouds, seemed often to be just a few miles away. It being nighttime by then, the illumination of the ground by the lightning was dramatic, and the whole show was spectacular!

I saw one pretty large secondary flash on the ground, immediately after a bolt hit that spot. I figured that secondary flash could have been power lines, but I also wonder if it could have been a transformer. (Said secondary flash lasted a good second, I would say.) I'm sure that a lot of our military guys / any regular pilots have been through a lot more fun, but for this "occaisional" commercial flyer, it was quite an experience. For an awful lot of people, it was no "fun" at all, of course.

Back in 2009, I was in the middle of the big ice storm that tagged AR / KY / S. IL (power out for many, for 3 weeks in mid-winter). And then a few months later I was dragging my generator to my Mom's in S. IL, which got hit by a "Convective Vortex" that developed on the north end of a Derecho. Winds topped out at around 106 mph in that baby, as I recall. According to the NWS, later, "most meteorologists will only see a derecho like this once in their career".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGJmOeDEBtw

Prayers up for all those in the path of Sandy, whether I agree with them politically or not!

but I also wonder if it could have been a transformer.

The local RACES (look it up) net sometimes asks for 'green flashes not associated with lightning'.

Well Duh... even cooks with ham radio licenses know that copper oxidizes to a green color.

White flash? Lightning (or a nuke, and if that's the case, there are other problems). Greenish flash (you will know in the afterimage, once you've seen one) is probably a transformer.

The oil coming out of busted and burned transformers isn't particularly something you want to roll around in, either. Run away works for that.

Difference between a storm spotter and a storm chaser is 50 IQ points. ;)

/johnny