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MechAg94:
https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1290678095268241410
Looking at this video, it looks like there are a bunch of those ship loading cranes close to where the bigger blast originated.  Makes me wonder if there was a ship load of explosives that went up.  I guess it could be some sort of storage bunker or building.  Either way, it looks like something started a fire that eventually set off ALL of the explosives. 

cordex:

--- Quote from: MechAg94 on August 04, 2020, 03:35:47 PM ---https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1290678095268241410
Looking at this video, it looks like there are a bunch of those ship loading cranes close to where the bigger blast originated.  Makes me wonder if there was a ship load of explosives that went up.  I guess it could be some sort of storage bunker or building.  Either way, it looks like something started a fire that eventually set off ALL of the explosives. 

--- End quote ---
There is (or was) a warehouse to the east of the silos.  It looks to me like the north side of that building was on fire and was generating the small explosions.  From the angles I've seen the large explosion appears to have been centered on that warehouse, not beyond it on a ship.

AZRedhawk44:
My primitive understanding of explosive mechanics, gleaned after the Boston Marathon bombing, is that explosions can consist of 3 things:  smoke, light, or energy.  Slow explosions produce a lot of smoke.  Like the conflagration of SpaceX's AMOS-6 static fire test that resulted in a destroyed rocket and payload.  Or the Boston black powder pressure cooker.  Smoke generation is usually a symptom of very imperfect combustion, starvation of oxidizer, I think.

Supposedly nuclear explosions generate a lot of light.  Don't know, never seen one and hope never to.  Fireworks also generate a lot of light, as does magnesium or phosphorus.  So chemical sources can also generate light over smoke.  Unsure of the "why" of it.

This explosion was a near perfect sphere of energy with very little smoke.  I've heard that C4 and other similar military grade explosives are extraordinarily efficient in producing energy with minimal smoke and light.  I was worried at first watching that I was seeing a nuclear explosion from the perfection of the sphere, but it appears to halt at about a 2-3 block radius or so.  And didn't appear to knock down buildings inside that 3 block radius, other than possibly the source building.


ETA:  Wow, watching it a few more times, I see shards of buildings 3 blocks away getting broken off and lifted into the sky.  Big pieces, several feet square, accelerated pretty fast.  This is the view from an apartment building probably a mile away or so, and elevated.  And the neighboring big white building appears to just get FLATTENED by the shockwave.

Brad Johnson:
Multiple angles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKn_3iJOP4

Looks like there was a fire before the detonation. Ammonium nitrate, possibly? That would be consistent with a shipping port where there might be a couple thousand tons of it stored somewhere.

Also, the giant red plum of... something... after the detonation. Any idea if that's an indicator of the material involved, or just dust/debris?

Brad

230RN:
Hint.  Don't look at fires through windows.

In the Halifax explosion of 1917, "Hundreds of people who had been watching the fire from their homes were blinded when the blast wave shattered the windows in front of them."<- wiki

It wrenched my heart that a team of firefighters had disappeared.

 :'( regardless of politics.  Halifax:  "Firefighter Billy Wells, who was thrown away from the explosion and had his clothes torn from his body, described the devastation survivors faced: 'The sight was awful, with people hanging out of windows dead. Some with their heads missing, and some thrown onto the overhead telegraph wires.' He was the only member of the eight-man crew of the fire engine Patricia to survive.[70] <-wiki

Must've been pretty humid judging from that cloud forming from the shock wave.

Don't know what the red plume was from.  Strontium burns red, but that's when it's burning.

Titanium chips are used for the white sparkling effect in aerial displays.

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