A solar flare accompanied by coronal mass ejections (CME) from the Sun triggered a geomagnetic storm that reached Earth on Tuesday.
The solar flare was extremely small and hit the Earth tangentially, so scientists They didn’t expect it to gain strengthHowever, on the way the plasma cloud moved towards Earth, collided with it and altered the planet’s magnetic field.
That triggered northern lights at various latitudes on Thursday night. Several sightings were reported in the United States. The storm intensified and this Friday morning it was named “severe” or G4, the second highest category within the classification, dictated by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States (NOAA).
The disturbance is expected to persist and likely last until Saturday. Consequently, there could be “fluctuations in the electrical grid” and sightings of the northern lights, “visible at high latitudes such as Canada and Alaska,” the SWPC said.
Generally, this phenomenon involves alterations in the Earth’s technological infrastructure, such as voltage irregularities in power systems and disconnections in networks. It can also cause orientation problems in space satellites, affect GPS navigation and trigger intermittence in high-frequency radio communications.
