I had another one of those "extended dazzle period" burns today. I'm not sure if it's a characteristic of the way the water heater burns or if it's something to do with the behavior of the light sensor I'm using. In either case, I've decided to "cure" the situation (really, a workaround) by increasing the "dazzled" timeout (FULL_FLAME_DAZZLE_PERIOD in waterbug.yaml) to 12 minutes. That covers the period of the two incidents I have observed, and it won't really make much difference in an actual case of the pilot light going out.