Night after night along Topsail Island, beachside residents have been pulling out their phones to record eerie, pulsating lights flickering above ocean-facing utility poles. The strange glow, sometimes described as hovering orbs or tiny sparks dancing around the crossarms, has stirred up chatter in the neighborhood and brought out local fire crews. Officials and utility experts say the show is real, but the cause is firmly grounded: electrical arcing made visible by salt-laden spray, not anything paranormal.
According to The Charlotte Observer, the Surf City Fire Department told residents on Facebook that the power poles "appear to be sparking or glowing at night" and stressed that no one should ever try to check it out up close. The paper also reported that Jones-Onslow Electric Membership Corporation has explained that this kind of sparking "can last for hours or even days," depending on wind and weather conditions.
What’s Behind The Lights?
Utility engineers say sea salt blown in from the ocean can collect on insulators and other hardware, forming a thin, conductive film. Under the right conditions, that film lets electricity jump tiny gaps, creating small arcs. In daylight those discharges can be hard to spot, but at night they show up as ghostly, pulsing points of light that look like they are hovering in the air.
Dominion Energy notes that along the coast, salt contamination combined with moisture can damage equipment and cause failures. A technical review on insulator contamination in Energies explains how salt deposits lower flashover voltages and create so-called "dry-band" discharges, which appear as the sparks or glowing patches residents are seeing.
Why It Shows Up On The Shore
The recipe for this light show is simple: on-shore breezes that push sea spray inland, high humidity that keeps everything damp, and long rows of exposed power lines facing the ocean. When those ingredients come together, salt builds up on insulators, gets wet, and starts misbehaving. That is why most of the reports are clustered along beach-facing circuits instead of farther inland.
A state utilities investigation into a coastal transmission outage found that salt and surface contamination were likely key culprits and pointed to fixes like swapping in porcelain insulators and targeted washing programs. The Rhode Island Division report lays out those mitigation steps in detail.
What Crews Do And What You Should Do
When utilities get reports of this kind of activity, crews typically patrol the affected spans, looking for contaminated or damaged hardware. They may wash insulators with high-pressure or deionized water or replace parts with higher-creepage porcelain or glass units that are better at resisting flashover in salty environments. Insulator maintenance and mitigation options like these are detailed in EPRI guidance.
For everyone else, the advice is simple: if you spot sparking or glowing equipment, or see any downed lines, keep your distance and call it in. Jones-Onslow Electric Membership Corporation provides outage reporting and safety resources for its members so they do not have to play amateur lineworker.
Local officials say the lights might look dramatic, but they are a warning sign of stressed equipment, not a light show to chase down. For Surf City, the coastal glow remains more of a maintenance headache than a mystery, and a reminder that sea spray is still one of the toughest daily rivals for power systems along the shore.
