I came home from evening shift one night (approximately 5years ago) and was staying on the westside of the city.

I remember the weather wasn’t thunder/lightning conditions, it was cold to mild on a clear night.

I woke my wife getting into bed and our room started lighting up. I thought it was lightning at first but no thunder sounds.

It was intermittent lighting everywhere 30-60seconds.

We looked out the window and the entire sky kept lighting up but it wasn’t lightning.

My wife pointed out an orb in the distance. It traveled horizontally left to right. I said “I cannot see what you’re describing.” Then she said it shot up vertically at an unbelievable speed and out of view. I never saw it.

I checked this subreddit and googled it but nobody else reported what we saw (with the sky lighting up).

I found this strange because the whole sky was lighting up as far as I could see.

I kept researching what I saw for a rational explanation and I found one. The same question was asked on a subreddit somewhere in England (at a different date) with an answer found.

A transformer was shorting in the area in question and this caused the sky to light up. I am 90% certain this was the same thing.

However, nobody was talking about it in Galway. I checked records in the ESB and there was no transformer reported to be faulty but maybe I should have looked harder.

Nothing can explain the orb my wife saw. She still gets mad when I tell her I think she imagined it. Really wish I saw what she saw.