This. Same timeframe and I've lived through both lots of lightning storms and in areas with lots of power failures. Some of them intermittent and essentially caused by transformers blowing up. Like earlier this winter, we had multiple storms where you'd hear a transformer blow up, in many cases even seeing the sky light up as well from it, power going out, couple seconds, power coming back, next transformer blowing out, rinse, repeat.

On the other hand I've read about plenty of stories of the "cheap" UPSs you'd usually buy as a consumer (not to name any brands coz I've never had any) actually causing such issues in the first place. Without any actual surges from the grid.

That said, being totally not superstitious (for real, but someone's gonna "kill me" if they find out I wrote this and something dies from a surge...), now I guess I need to knock on wood like seventeen times ...

I do use surge protectors when we're on generator power temporarily.

The things people often call "transformers blowing up" are usually not transformers blowing up.

Instead, it's usually just overhead wires that are too close or literally touching, often from influences like wind and ice. The electricity arcs between the wires, creating bright blue-white flashes that can be seen from far away, sometimes with instantaneous heat that makes hunks of metal wire evaporate explosively. It's can be violent and loud, and repetitious as different parts of even a single run fail.

Transformers can certainly blow up, but that's less common. They're (generally) filled with oil for cooling purposes, and they're massive things that tend to take time to get hot. A failed transformer can produce arcing and blue-white light, but if things are that hot then the oil is also ready to burn.

And when the oil burns it isn't blue-white -- it burns with about the same yellow-orange color we saw the last time we accidentally flambéed dinner on the kitchen stove, or a Hollywood fireball.

A bright flash without a fire is probably not a transformer.

Here's a video of a transformer actually-exploding (note the prominent fireball): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFkfd31Wpng

And here's a video of what someone describes as a transformer exploding, even though there are no transformers in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVh0KwG_0k

It's not just cheap UPSes, it's cheap surge protectors as well. They exist because the vendor can throw in a MOV costing a few cents and increase the price of the power strip by 50%, not because they're any good. MOVs are sacrificial components which have either degraded to uselessness by the time they're actually needed or, if they're still working, can explode or catch fire from the energy dissipated. Even if they don't, all they're doing is converting an x-kV spike on active into an around-x-kV spike on neutral or ground. If you want to do it properly, use a series tracking filter, not a "surge protector".