World News
Geomagnetic Storm Brings Dazzling Northern Lights to U.S. Skies
Forecasters warned the magnetic storm could cause power fluctuations, GPS degradation and intermittent disruptions to radios.
A surge in energized solar particles hurling toward the Earth is lighting up the skies as far south as Florida with dazzling displays, which meteorologists say is powerful enough to knock out a few radios.
The red, purple and green hues colored skies in Alabama, Ohio and Texas, and forecasters at the Space Weather Prediction Center have said the geomagnetic storm could intensify as the “final and most energetic CME,” meaning coronal mass ejection, is yet to arrive and could reach Earth on Wednesday afternoon.
A CME is an eruption of massive clouds of protons, electrons and magnetic fields from the sun’s outer atmosphere at very high speeds.
When it reaches the Earth’s magnetic field, also called the magnetosphere, it collides with the particles around the planet, producing colorful light known as aurora borealis in the Northern Hemisphere and aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere.
Shawn Dahl, a forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, said two CMEs had already reached Earth, resulting in a geomagnetic storm which reached G4 — the second-highest rating on a five-step scale.
The overall strength of the magnetic field from the passing CMEs was “not only eight times stronger than what’s normal but is also favorable at the moment for continued activity,” Dahl said in a video posted on X.
Forecasters warned the magnetic storm could cause power fluctuations, GPS degradation and intermittent disruptions to radios.
