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- A series of solar flares and coronal mass ejections have created dazzling auroras that may be seen as far south as Alabama and Northern California — but could also disrupt communications on Earth tonight and over the weekend.
- The ongoing geomagnetic storm is now "extreme," or level 5 out of 5, the Space Weather Prediction Center said Friday night. This is the first G5-level storm since October 2003.
- Increased solar activity causes auroras that dance around Earth’s poles, known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) and southern lights (aurora australis). When the energized particles reach Earth’s magnetic field, they interact with gases in the atmosphere to light up the sky with different colors.
- Though forecasters are working with operators to minimize the impact, the storm could affect the power grid as well as satellite and high-frequency radio communications. The Biden administration is monitoring the possibility of impacts, a White House official said.
The massive solar storm could present “a real danger,” especially with the modern world relying so much on electricity, according to Bill Nye the Science Guy, a science educator and engineer.
In comparison to tonight's event, Nye drew comparisons with another incident in 1859, known as the Carrington Event, when telegraph communications were severely affected.
“The other thing, everybody, that is a real danger to our technological society, different from 1859, is how much we depend on electricity and our electronics and so on,” Nye said. "None of us really in the developed world could go very long without electricity."
He noted that there are systems in place to minimize the impact, but “stuff might go wrong,” stressing that not all transformers are equipped to withstand such a solar event.
“It depends on the strength of the event and it depends on how much of our infrastructures are prepared for this the sort of thing,” he said.
Here's where clouds will block the view of the northern lights in the US\
After an incredibly stormy week, most of the Lower 48 has clear skies to see the northern lights. But there are some areas where clouds and rainy weather are spoiling the view.
A deck of clouds is blocking the sky in the Northeast, from parts of Virginia into Maine, as an area of low pressure spins off the East Coast.
In the Midwest, the aurora will be hard to see through thick clouds in parts of Wisconsin, Michigan — including the Upper Peninsula — and Illinois.
A stripe of clouds is tracking across Texas, including Dallas-Forth Worth, and into Louisiana.
And in the Southwest, patchy clouds across the the Four Corners region could make the northern lights difficult to spot.
Aurora seen at least as far south as Georgia
Barely visible to the naked eye, the aurora can be seen in Atlanta in the 10 p.m. ET hour.
It is easier to see through photographs using a long exposure. The photos below, taken by CNN's Eric Zerkel and Emily Smith, used 3- and 10-second exposures.
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