An unusually strong solar storm headed toward Earth could produce northern lights in the U.S. and potentially disrupt communications this weekend.

An unusually strong solar storm headed toward Earth could produce northern lights in the U.S. and potentially disrupt communications this weekend.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare geomagnetic storm watch — the first in nearly 20 years. The watch starts Friday and lasts all weekend.

NOAA is calling this an unusual event, pointing out that the flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that’s 16 times the diameter of Earth. An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 took out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.

The latest storm could produce northern lights as far south in the U.S. as Alabama and Northern California, according to NOAA.

    • Max-PEnglish
      4•7 months ago

      Fairly new to ham, what’s nice to listen to during an aurora? Just funny noise bursts? Any antenna precautions so I don’t fry my SDR?

  • LostXOR
    12•7 months ago

    NOAA’s predicting a Kp index of 8.33, hopefully we’ll get some good auroras tonight!

    • Flying SquidMEnglish
      9•7 months ago

      There was a map of my state showing where the aurora would likely be visible.

      The area stopped at the county immediately north of mine.

      Sigh.

      • LostXOR
        8•7 months ago

        Go out anyways and look north, there’s a good chance you’ll see something.

          • LostXOR
            2•7 months ago

            Yeah they can’t really be seen through clouds aside from maybe the clouds looking slightly brighter.

    • @A_A@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6•7 months ago

      The K-index quantifies disturbances in the horizontal component of Earth’s magnetic field with an integer in the range 0–9 (…)
      The official planetary Kp-index is derived by calculating a weighted average of K-indices from a network of 13 geomagnetic observatories (…)
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-index

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    3•7 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An unusually strong solar storm headed toward Earth could produce northern lights in the U.S. and potentially disrupt communications this weekend.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare geomagnetic storm watch — the first in nearly 20 years.

    NOAA said the sun produced strong solar flares beginning Wednesday, resulting in five outbursts of plasma capable of disrupting satellites in orbit and power grids here on Earth.

    Each eruption — known as a coronal mass ejection — can contain billions of tons of solar plasma.

    NOAA is calling this an unusual event, pointing out that the flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that’s 16 times the diameter of Earth.

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group.

    The original article contains 192 words, the summary contains 137 words. Saved 29%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • FiveMacsEnglish
      -7•7 months ago

      Ohh what I would give to see how the world is without internet services globally for like…a week. Make it your best solar flare sun, nothing but the best

      • @Carmakazi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12•7 months ago

        A solar storm of that scale wouldn’t just take down Facebook and Twitter for a while, it could destroy critical power infrastructure around the globe that would take months to repair. People would die.

        • SuiXi3D
          8•7 months ago

          And the state of Texas would make the survivors pay for it instead of the power companies that refused to use previous funding to implement preventive measures.