Solar storm puts on brilliant light show across the globe, but no serious problems reported
A powerful solar storm created an astonishing light show around the world overnight, but has caused what appeared to be only minor disruptions to the power grid, communications and satellite positioning systems.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said extreme geomagnetic storm conditions continued Saturday, and there were preliminary reports of power grid irregularities, deterioration of high-frequency communications and global positioning systems.
But the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that as of early Saturday morning, no FEMA region had reported any significant impact from the storms.
NOAA predicted the strong outbursts will continue at least through Sunday, and a spokeswoman said in an email that the agency’s Space Weather Prediction Center had prepared well for the storm.
On Saturday morning, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service said on its website that service had deteriorated and that its team was investigating. CEO Elon Musk wrote overnight on
Brilliant purple, green, yellow and pink hues of the Northern Lights were reported worldwide, with sightings in Germany, Switzerland, London, Prague, Barcelona and elsewhere.
In the US, Friday evening’s solar storm pushed the lights much further south than normal. People in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and other Midwestern states were able to take pictures of colors along the horizon.
NOAA said the solar storm will last through the weekend, offering another chance for many to see the Northern Lights Saturday evening.
The agency issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning Friday afternoon as a solar burst reached Earth hours earlier than expected.
NOAA warned operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit, as well as FEMA, to take precautions.
“For most people here on Earth, they don’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
“That’s actually the gift of space weather: the aurora,” Steenburgh said. He and his colleagues said the best aurora images may come from phone cameras, which can capture light better than the naked eye.
Take a photo of the sky and “you might be in for a nice treat,” says Mike Bettwy, chief operating officer of the forecast center.
The most intense solar storm in history, in 1859, produced auroras in Central America and possibly even Hawaii.
This storm poses a risk to high-voltage power transmission lines, not the power lines normally found in people’s homes, NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl told reporters. Satellites could also be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communications services here on Earth.
For example, an extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 knocked out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.
Even after the storm passes, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers can become distorted or lost, NOAA said. But there are so many navigation satellites that any glitches won’t last long, Steenburgh noted.
The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, resulting in at least seven plasma eruptions. Each eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection, can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
The flares appear to be associated with a sunspot 16 times the diameter of Earth, NOAA said. It’s all part of the solar activity that increases as the sun approaches the peak of its eleven-year cycle.
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Dunn reported from Cape Canaveral, Florida, while Krisher reported from Detroit and Funk from Omaha, Nebraska.