People across Texas got to see a display that's usually only visible close to the north or south pole. The northern lights, or aurora borealis, appeared in the sky in several parts of the state.
The blue, purple or green streaks of light in the sky are caused by particles from the sun interacting with the Earth's upper atmosphere and magnetic field. The solar wind is currently stronger than usual. A geomagnetic storm began impacting the earth on Friday. It's the strongest such storm in more than 20 years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center rated the current geomagnetic storm a G5 Friday evening, which is its most severe category. They also said that geomagnetic storming is likely to persist through the weekend
Storms of that intensity have the ability to affect some communications systems, GPS, and power grids. The Space Weather Prediction Center indicated on Friday that critical infrastructure operators had been notified so they can take protective action.
The geomagnetic storm is being driven, in part, by an unusual type of solar activity called a coronal mass ejection. KRLD Meteorologist Tom Hale recently spoke with Dr.
Michael Kirk about the phenomenon. Dr. Kirk is a research scientist in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
"What that is...is a big loop of plasma. This is electrons, protons, neutrons - all held aloft in the atmosphere by strong magnetic fields," Dr. Kirk said.
"Eventually, something becomes unstable, and that whole system erupts off the sun."
The last time the earth experienced a G5 geomagnetic storm was in October of 2003. During that storm, there were some power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.