After dark on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025, at the intersection of 13th Avenue and Hop Street.
A street light in west Albany got mentioned at the city council’s meeting on Oct. 8, not because it’s burned out but because it’s blue.
Councilwoman Steph Newton was the one who brought it up. A resident had asked her how come the light at 13th Avenue and Hop Street was casting such an eerie blue light.
I went to 13th and Hop after dark on Thursday. Sure enough, the light was definitely blue. The photos here are what my camera phone recorded. No editing was involved. No manipulation of the color.
“I understand that when LED lights fail they turn a bluish or purple color,” Kristin Preston, Albany’s interim public works director, told me. “We are going to identify the light pole numbers and submit a request to the power company for replacement.”
A quick Google search shows this to be a national phenomenon. In March, the newspaper USA Today had a long story about it.
LED stands for light-emitting diode. Fixtures using that technology naturally emit blue light. A coating of phosphor is used to turn the blue light white. When the coating cracks or comes off, he blue light comes through.
All over the country, cities and their utilities started replacing traditional yellow sodium-vapor lights with the LED variety in the 1990s. Now, some of the new lights seem to be failing like the one at 13th and Hop.
I don’t know how long it will take Pacific Power to replace the light. So enjoy the eerie hue while you can. (hh)
The blue street light may look interesting, but it doesn’t do much for visibility.
Oh My God!! What next? Social Media, from what I read in the actual paper version of the D-H, is making people violent by filling their brains full of lies and conspiracy theories. Now, we have to put up with harsh blue light from failing street lights!!
Speaking of lights, a huge security spotlight at the north end of West Albany High School shines down a side street and is so bright you can’t look at it. I’m sure people living on that street can’t take a walk at dusk because it would be too hard on their eyes.
I live in this neighborhood and wondered about the eerie blue. I thought it was some “dark skies” bulb, to keep the corner lit but the sky above dar. Thanks for reporting. (I actually like it!) There are a couple more blue LED lights at Marion St. SE and Lochner St. SE too. I thought it had something to do with the trucking and storage facility.
There are a bunch on old Salem also. They don’t turn blue or purple when they go bad. This is someone who ordered the wrong temperature LED’s.
Nah, it’s a ‘failure.’ The phosphor has delaminated from the bulb. They hinted at it in the story — the bulbs are naturally blue, but use fluorescent material (phosphor) that converts some of the blue light into longer wavelengths, and that color mixes to a “white.” When that phosphor fails/delaminates, you get to see the true bulb color. It isn’t a temperature thing, it’s buying cheap bulbs with shoddy materials.
Also, most of them on Hill St. seem to have been impacted by this.
Great photo Hasso, at first glance I thought it was an eerie od the moon.
Great photo Hasso, at first glance I thought it was an eerie shot of the moon.
Typo correction
Great photo Hasso, at first glance I thought it was an eerie shot of the moon.
Move them to the Police Department.
I actually kind of like it better!
All down Hill St SE, the street lights are blue. It is horrible. It is substantially darker and kids have almost been hit because it is harder to see them right now as it is darker earlier at night.
Hill and Queen is particularly bad and a lot of the lights south of that intersection.
Since a city council person probably doesn’t live on Hill St, I doubt they will do anything to fix them. They have been this way for months.
The City website has a link to report defective street lights to Pacific Power.
https://albanyoregon.gov/report-streetlight-outages
I’m sure the reason for many lights going out on Hill at about the same time is that they were installed at the same time when Hill was being rebuilt a few years back. I was just at 31st and Hill on an evening walk and looking both ways most were blue.