a powerful solar storm wear amazing sky light show It affected the entire world overnight, but appears to have caused only minor disruptions to power grids, communications, and satellite positioning systems.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said extreme geomagnetic storm conditions continued Saturday, with preliminary reports of power grid anomalies and degradation of radio frequency communications and the Global Positioning System.
But the Federal Emergency Management Agency said no FEMA regions have reported significant impacts from the storm so far.
NOAA predicts the strong flares will continue through at least Sunday, and a spokesperson said in an email that the agency's Space Weather Prediction Center is well prepared for the storm.
On Saturday morning, SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service announced on its website that service was degraded and its team was investigating. CEO Elon Musk wrote on social platform X overnight that the company's satellites are “under tremendous pressure, but are holding up so far.”
Vivid shades of purple, green, yellow and pink aurora Sightings have been reported around the world, including in Germany, Switzerland, China, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
In the United States, Friday's solar storm caused light to move farther south than usual. The National Weather Service Miami office confirmed sightings in the Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers, Florida areas. Meteorologist Nick Carr said another forecaster near Fort Lauderdale photographed the light and was familiar with it because he previously lived in Alaska.
People in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and other Midwestern states were able to snap photos of bright colors along the horizon.
Saturday night offered many people another chance to see the spectacle, as the solar storm continued into the weekend.
NOAA issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning Friday afternoon as a solar explosion reached Earth several hours earlier than expected.
The agency warned operators of power plants, orbiting spacecraft, and FEMA to take precautions.
“For most people on Earth, there's no need to do anything,” says Rob Steenberg, a scientist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.
“It's really a gift from space weather, the aurora borealis,” Steenberg said. He and his colleagues said the best view may come from a cell phone camera, which is better able to capture light than the naked eye.
When you take a photo of the sky, “you might actually find a nice little reward in there,” says Mike Betwee, the prediction center's director of operations.
In 1859, the most intense solar storm in recorded history occurred, possibly producing aurora borealis in Central America and even Hawaii.
NOAA space weather forecaster Sean Dahl told reporters that the storm poses a risk to the power grid's high-voltage power lines, not the power lines in your home. Satellites may also be affected, potentially disrupting navigation and communication services on Earth.
For example, an extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 caused power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.
Even after a storm passes, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers can become scrambled or lost, according to NOAA. However, Steenberg noted that any outage should not last long because there are so many navigational satellites.
Since Wednesday, the sun has unleashed a strong solar flare that has triggered at least seven bursts of plasma. Each eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection, can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.
The flare appears to be associated with a sunspot 16 times the diameter of Earth, NOAA said. This is all part of the increased solar activity as the Sun approaches the peak of her 11-year cycle.
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Dan reported from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Krisher from Detroit, and Funk from Omaha, Nebraska.