The weekend was lit with the ethereal glow of auroras, painting the skies from the United States to Tasmania, and even reaching the Bahamas. This celestial spectacle, often known as the “northern lights”, was a result of an intense solar storm that continued into Sunday.
As the night fell on Saturday, social media platforms were flooded with images of these mesmerizing lights, although they were not as vivid as those observed on Friday night.
The solar storm was triggered by multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – phenomena involving the expulsion of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun. The first of these CMEs was recorded just after 4pm GMT on Friday by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), based in the United States.
The storm escalated to an “extreme” level, marking the first such event since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003, which led to power outages in Sweden and damage to power infrastructure in South Africa. The storm on Friday reached level five geomagnetic conditions, the highest on the scale. The conditions varied between G3 and G5 on Saturday, with predictions of G4 or higher for Sunday and possible G3 conditions extending into Monday.
Despite the severity of the storm, no significant disruptions to power or communication networks have been reported. The SWPC mentioned preliminary reports of irregularities in power grids, potential degradation of high-frequency communications, GPS, and possibly satellite navigation.
Elon Musk, the founder of Starlink, a satellite internet operator with approximately 5,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, stated that his satellites were experiencing significant pressure but were holding up well so far.
