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It is still possible to observe the Northern Lights from lower latitudes

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The solar storm that pushed the northern lights much further south than normal is expected to continue Sunday evening and possibly throughout the week, forecasters say, but its impact will not be as strong as in previous days.

Meanwhile, although the storm impacted power grids, telecommunications and global positioning systems, only minor disruptions were reported as the storm sent powerful electromagnetic pulses toward Earth.

The series of powerful coronal mass ejections that arrived at Earth on Friday produced dazzling spectacles across the Northern Hemisphere on Friday and Saturday in places that don’t normally see them, including parts of China, Europe and the United States. -United.

Solar activity produces ejections of energetic particles that interact with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and produce auroras that hover around its poles. They are called aurora borealis around the North Pole and aurora australis around the South Pole.

Storms on Friday and Saturday extended the viewing of the aurora australis to New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Argentina.

In the United States, viewings have been reported as far away as Alabama and Georgia, as well as northern California. The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) said the powerful geomagnetic storm will become more intense overnight Sunday and aurora will become visible again at lower latitudes.

The origin of the solar storm is linked to a group of sunspots on the surface of the sun. The spots are filled with magnetic fields that can act like slingshots, sending large quantities of charged particles toward Earth. These events are known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and are most common around the peak of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle, in 2025.

The particles will mostly miss Earth, but now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency says several of the ejections are headed directly toward Earth.

The storm reached G5 – or “extreme” – levels on Friday and Saturday, causing bright green, pink and purple lights to appear. Another burst of particles is expected to reach Earth on Sunday, producing G4 – or “severe” – levels and possibly reaching G5 conditions again early Monday.

While extreme storms create conditions that allow lights to extend far from poles, these conditions can disrupt power grids, cause blackouts, and degrade satellite communications and navigation systems.

A similar event occurred in 2003, causing power outages in parts of Sweden and damaged electrical transformers in South Africa.

The SWPC received reports of power grid irregularities, disrupted high-frequency radio communications, degraded GPS and changes in spacecraft operations during the G5 storm Friday and Saturday, said Lt. Bryan Brasher , project manager at the agency.

While power grids around the world were heavily stressed during the G5 storm, the SWPC was not informed of any damage, Brasher said.

“We have received reports of degraded radio communications from air and sea operators,” Brasher said in an email to NPR. “We have not received any reports of disrupted satellite communications.”

Brasher said the effects on GPS were noticeable during the storm.

“We have heard of problems with the use of precision GPS in agriculture in various parts of the Midwest and the US and European satellite navigation augmentation systems have seen notable (but not necessarily impactful) changes in positional accuracy,” he said.

The storm is less likely to have the same impact in the coming days as Friday and Saturday, said Shawn Dahl, SWPC services coordinator.

“Most of the material will likely pass in front of Earth, however, interplanetary space is still very disturbed and even just the lateral edge of the latest CMEs will likely result in very severe conditions,” he said.

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