Ok, so the title is a reference to a staple of the old Hee Haw show.
After speculating that the flares I saw Saturday night might have been launched by the Raleigh Fire Department to gauge the wind currents before the Wide Open Bluegrass fireworks that night, I reached out to department officials this morning to learn if the FD did this sort of thing.
I got a call back this afternoon from the official who approved the city’s fireworks permit and we had a good chat. He told me they don’t normally launch anything to gauge the wind but rely on observed conditions and the weather forecast. He said that the location I guessed the flares were coming from would’ve been too far away from the fireworks site to be useful, anyway.
The bottom line is that the mystery flares are not the work of the fire department, after all. Now I’m really going to have to work to track this thing further.