Night skies in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere are expected to once again bloom with brightly colored aurora borealis, or aurora borealis, on Saturday night as a powerful geomagnetic storm driven by an active sun continues into the weekend.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationThe company, which monitors space weather, said in an update on Saturday that it continues to observe solar activity, which could lead to periods. “Severe to extreme” magnetic storm. Federal agencies issued their first warning Friday after an explosion of material from the sun's surface entered Earth's atmosphere and caused glitches in power, navigation and communication systems.
Major power companies had largely prepared their power grids for the solar storm, and customers were not affected.
For most people, the solar storm was a gift. A ribbon of pink, purple, and green light spread across the night sky across much of the United States, Canada, and Europe. If the skies are clear Saturday evening, we can expect some light again.
This light, known as the aurora, is caused by particles from the sun interacting with gases in Earth's atmosphere, and is usually only observed at latitudes near the North or South Poles. But on Friday night, residents in lower latitudes, including North Carolina and Arizona, witnessed dancing lights.
Jane Wong, 30, of San Francisco, drove to the Presidio overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, where it was initially foggy. But at midnight, her wait was worth it, as the sky began to clear.
“It’s right here and it’s a really great place,” she said.
Benjamin Williamson, 41, of Bath, Maine, drove to Portland Head Light, the state's lighthouse. An aurora enthusiast, he had observed the aurora in 2003 and again in 2017 when he was in Iceland during another major solar phenomenon. Neither those events nor the April 8 solar eclipse prepared me for what I saw on Friday.
“I thought last month's solar eclipse was the most amazing thing I've ever seen,” he said. “We could have won this.”
Solar storms are caused by the intense ejection of charged particles from the sun's surface. When this material is directed toward Earth, it can interact with Earth's magnetic field and create magnetic storms.
NOAA classifies geomagnetic storms on a “G” scale from 1 (“mild”) to 5 (“extreme”). On Thursday, authorities issued a warning for the first G4, or “severe” storm in 19 years, but the warning was expanded Friday afternoon.
Activity has exceeded the agency's forecasts, with some of it now classified as a G5 storm, making it the strongest storm to reach Earth since October 2003.
This storm is caused by huge clumps of sunspots, dark, cold, and strong magnetic fields on the Sun's surface. (If you still have eclipse glasses, you might be able to see the sunspot during the day.) According to NOAA, the cluster will continue to flare and explode, impacting Earth through at least the weekend. It means. In 1989, geomagnetic disturbances disrupted power systems in Canada and the United States. Since then, energy providers have remained on guard.
“Utilities are doing the necessary vulnerability assessments and preparing for major storms,” said Bob Allitt, a technology executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent research and development organization.
Allit added that some power companies had high temperature warnings sounding on parts of their power grids overnight, but it was too early to know whether the warnings were related to the solar storm. He said he could not reveal where the alerts would be installed as of Saturday.
But it added that while the power system faced additional stress from the storm, there was “no reason to feel there is an imminent threat of damage to equipment.”
The solar storm prompted many power grid managers to take extra precautions to keep power flowing and to issue warnings to customers about potential disruptions.
PJM, which manages the nation's largest power grid spanning 13 states from the East Coast to the Midwest, said the geomagnetic disturbance warning will remain in place until the end of Saturday. ISO New England, which manages the power grid in six Northeastern states, issued a precautionary alert to notify wholesale energy market participants and generation equipment owners that an abnormal condition exists in the power system.