The National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center on Friday issued a “severe geomagnetic storm watch” for the weekend, the first of its kind in nearly 20 years.
The sun began flaring on Wednesday, triggering five outbursts of plasma capable of disrupting satellites in orbit as well as power grids on Earth. The waves of high-energy radiation, called coronal mass ejections or CMEs, could also result in “spectacular displays of aurora” from Friday evening through the weekend, the agency said.
That means the northern lights could be visible as far south in the U.S. as Alabama and Northern California
“The mass ejected from the sun carries some of the sun’s magnetic field with it. When the magnetized matter from the sun collides with Earth’s magnetic field and rams into the outer layers of our protective field, we often get a geomagnetic storm,” Delores Knipp, a space weather research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Newsweek.
Such events are classified on a scale of G1, which is a minor storm, to G5, which is extreme. The storm forecast for the weekend is a G4, which the agency considers “severe.”
There are around 100 G4 storms per 11-year solar cycle, however, only three have been observed since the start of the current solar cycle in December 2019. The most recent was seen on March 23. This one is the first “severe” geomagnetic storm watch the agency has issued since 2005.
In Sweden, an extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 knocked out power and damaged power transformers in South Africa.
“We have a rare event on our hands,” Shawn Dahl, a service coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, told NBC News. “We’re a little concerned. We haven’t seen this in a long time.”
Because the “unusual” event is capable of disrupting communication, satellite and grid operators have been notified to prepare, Dahl added. It is expected to start around 8 p.m.
With News Wire Services
