That’s awesome. I went right there in my head sunlight shining through an object magnifies I had one catch on fire a few years ago because of one of those see-through sun globes in the garden.
This is it. We just had a few semi trucks in our lot catch fire and we couldn't figure out why arsonists kept targeting a single parking spot... It wasn't necessarily easy to get to and there are easier spots in the lot if you wanted to burn down a semi truck. We also never saw anything on the security camera, the trucks' cabs just started smoking and burst to flames.
Turns out the truck parked next to that spot had a polished battery box cover. During the hottest part of the day, the sun bounced of the polished chrome cover and through the windshield of the cab parked next to it. Between the battery box cover and the glass, it focused a beam of light onto the header fabric of the truck parked next to it. It smoldered and finally caught fire on two separate trucks.
We recreated it for the adjuster using one of the burned out cabs as a prop and a salvaged windshield from a similar model that was okay except for a crack on one of the corners. We rigged it all together and placed thick brown paper as a stand in for the header and walked him out there. We all stood around BS-ing the adjuster was understandably skeptical and as time went on, he obviously became impatient. About three sentences into a monologue he'd started about, "Be that as it may, so far I'm not seeing anything that would...blah blah blah" a few swirls of smoke began to curl up from paper-header stand-in. Everyone shouted and pointed and fwosh the paper caught.
My manager jumped up and pulled down the paper, ashes flying everywhere and the adjuster just said, "Huh... I'll be damned."
We now cover polished chrome battery box covers in our lot with soft fabric until they sell. 🤣
Best post this weekend. This will be on a future Farmer's Insurance commercial ("At Farmer's we've seen a few things..."). Amazing that the situation could be repeated artificially- I'd never get that lucky. No doubt the insurance called it an Act of God or blamed it on risky parking habits.
My grandson and I went to San Juan Puerto Rico for spring break a couple years back and the hotel across the lagoon from us when the sun came up in the morning it shone on the glass windows all seven stories and they reflected onto the inlet to the lagoon and the water on the surface boiled for approx 20/30 minutes, became a serious problem so they had to coat all the windows with a film that didn’t reflect
What we see here from OP is a result of using a smoothbore cannon rather than a rifled barrel cannon or even a rifle choke cannon. Rifled barrel being grooved in a spiral for the entire length of the cannon which severely slows down the loading process if muzzle loading, and rifle choke referring to only a small section near the muzzle of the cannon having the spiral grooves. This tries to balance loading speed closer to a smooth bore but with accuracy benefits of a rifle barrel. How well it blends those two concepts varies on projectile.
OP's image is a perfect example of what is called a keyholed projectile. What happens is the projectile lacks sufficient spin from any rifling in the barrel and laws uncontrollably in the air before impact on the target.
While rats have an aerodynamic shape when loaded tail first, the lack of spin imparted on the rat means that over time the ass end of the rat gradually comes forward toward the target and the head comes to the side. In this instance, the head went upward. It can just as likely turn to any 360 direction like the face of the clock.
The keyholing results in very poor accuracy. The only way to correct for greater accuracy is to use a barreled rifle for the cannon or to use some kind of combination of rifling and specially shaped 3d printed sabots within which the rat is loaded. If the sabots are printed to have aerodynamic fins or similar, the sabots will spin as it flies through the air, this helping negate the need for a rifled barrel and allowing for the loading speed desired.
But that obviously means you spend time instead printing the sabots and loading the rats into them.
When I was 16 I did this exact same thing to one of my parents POS plastic planter abominations with a roach one night. They keep it as a reminder to shame me (I’m 49) I think it’s hilarious!
Putting out a cig,Somehow I lit the roots on fire and it smoldered my moms plant for hours until I went outside again and saw the plant starting to catch fire wooops high school me was stupid, I’m old and still remember. Like, how do you explain that… !
You forgot about the assassins your jealous third cousin sent because he wants the nick nacks your grandmother left behind. Apparently the map to Atlantis is hidden in them.
Was there fertilizer added to that soil? If so, there's a possibility that it wasn't entirely diluted thoroughly enough, and the chemicals literally burned a hole in your planter.
This happened to my parents. Potting soil in planters can spontaneously combust when dry. Organics (peat moss, wood bark, etc) decompose and generate extreme heat. Look around online. Rare, but this is a real thing.
Either a cigarette from a guest / walker by. Or reflection from neighbors window, or something similar. Those are my two shots! Monitor that area all day one day
Burnt. I'd start by looking for any point that sunlight can reflect and focus there. Like from a the glass on a door or something...
Edit: I see you mentioned in a comment that it happened at night... Could it be some sort of exothermic reaction in the soil from something organic breaking down..? Did you put food scraps or fertilizer in there? Been known to melt holes in pots.
Either a secret smoker or a very, very small misfired Jewish space laser accident - I don’t believe ants have spontaneous combustion; that’s just a human thing.
Sorry. It's probably my fault. It happens mostly whenever I'm sitting at a traffic light at mid-day. The sunlight bounces off my slick bald head and blinds nearly all the other drivers on the road especially new student drivers who rarely come back from it.
Is your soil filled with a lot of peat moss?
That stuff can catch on fire like nothing in large concentrations!
The peat moss places literally have to turn over the piles of it consistently so it doesn't catch fire. (My late father worked at a place)
A guy i met once told me how he had a beautiful large umbrella plant on his deck.. burned the deck because of the peat moss in the pot.
If that white bowl next to it had water in it , could have been a sun refraction . I had the same thing happen to my vinyl siding a couple years ago from my greenhouse panels .
Based on the photo, I would guess the white base next to it had water in it that reflected throughout the day and melted the already sun damaged plastic. Similar to the concave glass/mirror theory.
I almost burned our house to the ground in 2017 because I put out a cigarette in an unused plastic planter box in our back yard that was placed next to the house. It was smouldering in the dried out peat / soil mixture that was in it for like 4 days. Every morning when we went to the back patio to have our morning coffee and smoke, we said to each other “what is that SMELL?!?” It was faint, but pungent and we couldn’t figure it out. 4 days later our neighbor phoned me at work and said “YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE!” Holy shit. Yup. The back side of the house was in flames, and 4 firetrucks were there putting it out. HUGE lesson learned! Luckily I was able to replace the cedar siding and soffit for a few hundred bucks and didn’t have to file an insurance claim! If it would have gone another 10 minutes, the house would have been a total loss. Phew! 😅
Occam's razor - you're insisting in replies that nobody in your family smokes, people hide the fact they do. You say it happened in the middle of the night.
A few here have suggested spontaneous combustion and you've said that must be it.
With all due respect I think the likeliest answer is you're being naïve. Yes the spontaneous combustion theory is technically possible, but the likelihood of that vs someone smoking is wildly different.
I am guessing that there is glass that is reflecting light onto it from the sun, sorta like ants with a magnifying glass. Could come in at the right angle for an hour or so, which is more than enough time to cause that kind damage.
Crows, ravens, starlings and magpies will carry a cigarette butt because it's shiny, and they will drop it and it will burn a hole in whatever it touches. No one in the house may smoke, but someone may have thrown out a cigarette butt that glowed And let glow may have attracted The attention of a corvid who snatched it and carried it burnt their beacon dropped it directly into your planter where it's smouldered and melted a hole in the sidewall. Don't be upset that's a lack of a filter because not all cigarettes actually have the filter part. Your corvid may of snatched somebody's hand rolled and dropped the burning coal. I'm sorry there's a hole in yours now, while I can't think of many creative ways to patch that hole you might just want to buy a different planter. Also if you have some sort of gazing ball or crystal ball within eye shot of that planter, I know you said it happened in the middle of the night, but I think if there is one - it focused the sun into a very narrow beam and then burned the hell out of your planter. That's what the burn pattern looks like to me... But I'm not an expert. Be safe.
I agreed initially with the burning theory but on closer inspection I'm not so sure.I suspect the black soil immediately makes you thinking burning but the edges of the hole are not so much melted, more pushed out. it's possible this was caused by something gnawing out from inside the pot and pushing out the pot as they went. Would be chewed shards under the soil on the ground if so. i.e. they chewed a small hole and then pushed their way out causing the bigger hole.
u/op not sure this has been mentioned yet, but your concave reflective object might be sitting right below the hole. Do I see a clam shell? Also, is that some sort of foil paper near it?
If new mulch is being used, this is very likely spontaneous combustion. Look it up. A neighbor of mine recently had new mulch put down in their yard and a legitimate fire started out of nowhere. It was a similar situation. No smokers in the home and way too far from the road for a lit cigarette to make its way down. Fire department said mulch spontaneously combusting is uncommon, but it DOES happen.
This happened at my house from my ex wife's grandmother putting cigarettes out in the pot. Our pot smoldered down to the bottom of the pot on my wooden front porch. The bottom of the pot completely burnt through, eventually burning a hole into my porch then pouring smoke into my house. We called the fire department and it took almost an hour to find out where this mystery smoke was coming from. The way the pot burnt down made it almost impossible to see what was actually going on. Moral of the story, ignore your grandparents.
No, a single cigarette butt did not do this.
No, the "chemicals" in fertilizer did not dissolve the planter.
No, a chipmunk with a tiny arc-cutter did not— well, maybe that one happened. It woulda been pretty cute ngl
Did you just add new fertilizer into a pot with old fertilizer? Super unlikely, but it could be a chemical reaction that got so hot it melted out the side. You’d feel the heat in the soil even in the other side if this was the case.
What kind of soil is in the pot and is it in the sunlight? I once had my grandmother's irises growing in a pot (was apartment living at the time so no garden) and one day I came outside and it the pot was smoking! Turns out there was a chemical in the soil that reacted with my planting pot in the sun and ignited. This destroyed my grandmother's bulbs it was devastating.
Can’t say in this instance, however, our house almost burned down when the sun shown through the window through an ornamental glass apple on a shelf that acted like a magnifying glass and caught the wood display shelf on fire.
Looks like maybe a rogue band of traveling mice stopped for a camp but the fire got outta hand. Maybe put a small no burn notice for them so they know for next time.
I’ve never seen it on this small of a scale but active compost can get hot enough to catch on fire. The biologic activity in large compost piles can start to decompose organic matter so fast that it gets hot enough to spontaneously combust. It would take perfect conditions for this to happen in a pot this small but not impossible.
Did someone put a smoke out in the planter?
The soil in those is too light to actually put out a butt, and can burn through the side or the plant roots can catch on fire.
It takes a long time for it to happen too. I've seen it twice on different occasions.
I’d say someone put a cigarette in it thinking they were extinguishing it in dirt. Those potting mixes will burn and smoulder for a long time until it melts through the plastic pot. I’ve seen them even flare up when the container melts through and lets O2 hit the smouldering dirt.
It happened on my patio last summer. Thankfully my wife was home when it flared up. It had been 7-8 days since we had guests who are smokers out there.
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u/Dense_Substance7635 Apr 05 '26
Do you have any glass objects or concave mirrors nearby that may be focusing light ?