While the ‘forecast’ isn’t for a Carrington Event, this weekend might be interesting if you rely on GPS or are into Ham/voice comms…
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Thursday that a “severe” G4 geomagnetic storm would hit the Earth perhaps as early as Friday.
The “very rare” warning hasn’t been issued in 20 years. The radiation will almost certainly wreak havoc on some communications
“Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth’s surface, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations,” the NOAA said.
Full article, HERE from PJ Media and another from CBS HERE.
Here’s a ‘chart’ of how far south the aurora borealis may be visible from NOAA.
Some are saying the lights ‘may’ be visible as far south as Atlanta. Having seen them more than once in Alaska, Iceland, and Greenland, they ARE impressive especially when they are bright enough to read a book with!
They also screw up radio comms…sigh…
Anyway, if you’re up at zero dark 30, you might want to step outside and see if there is anything to see if you don’t have cloud cover!
Oh yeah, while I’m thinking about it, I now have a Substack! https://oldnfo.substack.com/
Unfortunately, we seldom don’t have cloud cover. There’s probably a reason why half the rivers and creeks in the state have their headwaters within 20 miles of here.
I have always had map books,seems they may pay off this weekend!
The aurora was supposed to be visible up here, if you got away from both clouds and lights (TX-OK-NM border area). I’ve seen them in Flat State, back in the early 2000s. Those were black and white pillars, and a pale glow to the north.
Mom and DadRed went up to Churchill, Canada and saw the colorful ones there.
Too much light from the big city, alas. Saw them when I was younger and about 90 miles North of where we live now.
FWIW – Hope Substack works for you. I find Ss to be a bit like streaming vs. cable: it started out very attractive but pretty soon everyone was asking for a subscription and I was – potentially – paying too much in monthly subscriptions. I’ve thought that federation was a potential answer, but that’s maybe nothing more than recreating the (magazine) wheel.
Here’s a current refreshable map at earth.nullschool.net that will show you the current size/shape of the aurora over a lined map of the globe. Click and drag to rotate the globe, mouse-wheel to zoom in/out:
https://is.gd/RSWI7f
They said they were seeing them from Lake Texoma last night. I went outside several times and saw nothing.
Then of course some people in PLANO said the saw them…
Yeah, right, sure you did… With all the light pollution down there, they probably were just seeing the lights from the mall or some such.
I’ve never seen the Aurora. Lived in Oregon 10 years – not once. Never in my 20+ years of growing up in NY either.
No luck here either, John. We had clouds to our south, it was clear to our north, and the active line had already moved south of our position by the time actual full night had fallen (around 10:25 PM.)
By then I was just too tired to wait up any more, and headed off to bed. Did get to see some pictures from other people, but I really was hoping to see it grand-scale in the sky.
As I understand it, it ended up being a G5 event with many places in Northern Louisiana being able to see it, and even some people in Georgia saying they saw some form of it also.
The space weather center https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ was announcing the G4 storm,but we’ve had a few gusts of G5 yesterday and early this morning. FWIW, the site offers realtime ratings. Though I was up at 0 dark 30, I forgot to look for auroras. I’m at 42 degrees, so I’ll try tonight or tomorrow morning.
I’m running JS8Call on the HF Ham bands, and the best I’ve seen are a few snippets getting through. From an unidentified Ham on 40 meters: “The bands suck!”. Right now, I’m not seeing anything.
So far, satellite TV and internet is working. Signal strengths are down slightly, but even with the G5 hits, still got through.
Pretty darn bright last night here in the Pacific Northwest. Not very colorful, lot of very pale greens and reds with the mostly grey. Sometimes they got bright enough to cast shadows. Best I have seen since I left Quebec.
All- Thanks for the info! I slept through it since we had cloud cover when I went to bed. Having seen them a few times, they are something else! Ag, thanks for the real time update info!
I went outside last night around 2200 local, and *might* have seen some of it. Some people out here have taken pix of it, but they were closer to the Wyoming border than here.
HF Band conditions were actually pretty good yesterday until about 2200, but today there’s nothing on 75, 40, 20, 17, 15, or 10 Meters. Complete wipe-out!
We had crazy visuals last night. Red, green, blue, grey. We’re i western middle Tennessee.
A friend in Kerrville, Texas, who is an amateur astronomer saw the northern lights last night.
drjim- We had clouds… sigh… and now they’re saying it was a G5!
Tree- Nice!!!
Bill- Sigh, good for him!
Would this event have interfered with cell phone connections? I could not get a call in or out yesterday. The screen looked normal for attempting a call, but nothing actually happened. Both ends have marginal tower connectivity normally, but this seemed odd in how the phone acted. In the San Jose hills area.