This is NOAA’s first severe storm watch in nearly 20 years.
Americans nationwide can get it A chance to see the Northern Lights This weekend.
Continuous solar flares and “outbursts” from the Sun lead to geomagnetic storms said Thursday.
Because geomagnetic storms are severe, Americans are inside Many in northern states Some people in the lower Midwest can see the Aurora Borealis. But lights can be seen As far south as AlabamaAccording to the federal agency.
This is the first severe geomagnetic storm observation by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center In almost 20 years.
The solar flare, which began around 5 a.m. ET on Wednesday, is associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) directed toward Earth.
CMEs are the ejection of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona, the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere. SWPC.
When these discharges head toward Earth, lasting days or 15 hours, they cause geomagnetic storms, which are disturbances in the magnetic field around the planet.
“The fast-moving particles then hit our thin, high-altitude atmosphere, colliding with Earth’s oxygen and nitrogen particles,” it says. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “As these air particles shed the energy they picked up from the collision, each atom begins to glow a different color,” giving us the aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere and the aurora australis in the southern hemisphere.
SWPC Recommends To experience the full brilliance of the aurora, travel away from city lights to view the sky within two hours of midnight, between 10pm and 2am local time.
Beautiful ribbons of lights aren’t the only effect of geomagnetic storms.
These storms also have the potential to disrupt communications, power grids, radio signals and satellite operations. The SWPC said that operators of various systems have been informed so that they can take safety measures.
Severe geomagnetic storms in October 2003 The northern lights were visible as far south as Texas, but they affected more than half of all spacecraft orbiting Earth and temporarily disrupted satellite television and radio services. In addition, many deep space missions must be put into safe mode or shut down completely to prevent disruption.
“As far as the worst-case scenario expected on Earth, it’s hard to say, and I don’t want to speculate on that,” NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl said during a media briefing Friday. “However, the acute stage is very unusual. It is a very rare event.”
