The first of what could be several geomagnetic storms impacted the globe on Friday and created the rare sight of the Northern Lights being visible in South Florida and several other parts of the US.
The first of what could be several geomagnetic storms impacted the globe on Friday and created the rare sight of the Northern Lights being visible in South Florida.
Photos on social media showed the colorful hues seen in the South Florida skies.
National Weather Service Miami meteorologist Luke Culver posted photos on X of the aurora taken along U.S. 27.
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"Unbelievable! I never would’ve thought I’d see it…the aurora in South Florida!!!" Culver wrote.
People in other parts of Florida also had an amazing view. Traveler Chase Nawrocki captured the Northern Lights as he headed out of Tampa on a flight.
The National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center issued a "severe geomagnetic storm" warning for the first time in nearly 20 years when a solar outburst reached Earth on Friday afternoon, hours sooner than anticipated.
The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma. 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 seem to be associated with a sunspot that’s 16 times the diameter of Earth, experts said. It is all part of the solar activity ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.
MORE ON THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said extreme geomagnetic storm conditions continued Saturday, and there were preliminary reports of power grid irregularities, degradation of high-frequency communications and global positioning systems.
But the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that as of midday Saturday morning, no FEMA region had reported any significant impact from the storms.
NOAA predicted that strong flares will continue through at least 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 been degraded and its team was investigating. CEO Elon Musk wrote on X overnight that its satellites were “under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far."
