MONROE — The Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, put on quite a show overnight this past weekend. A severe geomagnetic storm collided with Earth, which put the traditional arctic show on tour for much of the rest of the northern hemisphere, as well as more of the southern hemisphere as usual.
The dancing light show stretched as far south as Alabama, Florida and Texas, where residents there could see the performance on the northern sky’s horizon. In Wisconsin, the flickers of moving light were overhead, and shined brighter once the evening thunderstorms moved past the area. Pictures from photographers — amateurs and professional — spread across social media quickly.
The activity reached Level 5 “extreme” conditions, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), a division of the National Weather Service. A Level 5 event had not been seen since October 2003, when power was knocked out in Sweden and damaged electrical transformers in South Africa. This time around, the geomagnetic storm warning lasted until the early hours of May 13. SWPC reported power grid irregularities and degradations to high-frequency communications and GPS.
The geomagnetic storm came as a sunspot the width of 17 Earths released a series of solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that began on May 8. Solar flares travel at speeds of more than 1,100 miles per second. CMEs are explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun’s corona. They cause geomagnetic storms when they are directed at Earth.
“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,” SWPC wrote in a press release May 9. “SWPC has notified the operators of these systems so they can take protective action. Geomagnetic storms can also trigger spectacular displays of aurora on Earth. A severe geomagnetic storm includes the potential for aurora to be seen as far south as Alabama and Northern California.”
The first of several CMEs reached Earth on Friday, May 10 at 11:37 a.m. Central Standard Time. The CME was “very strong” and SWPC quickly issued a series of geomagnetic storm warnings. SWPC observed G4 conditions just one hour after the first CMEs of the event hit Earth.
“This is an unusual and potentially historic event,” Clinton Wallace, SWPC director said at the time.
John Deere customers were warned that its GPS network was “extremely compromised” due to the geomagnetic storm. The company told customers it would try to correct those affected by the storm, because there was “drastic shifts” in the fields where farmers were planting during the celestial event.
“When you head back into these fields to side dress, spray, cultivate, harvest, etc. over the next several months, we expect that the rows won’t be where the AutoPath lines think they are,” the company said. “This will only affect the fields that are planted during times of reduced accuracy.”