Northern lights wow skywatchers at unusual southerly latitudes

Skies and social media lit up with aurora borealis Tuesday night as a severe geomagnetic storm buffeted Earth. Odds remain good through Wednesday night for more as additional waves arrive. Once aurora winds down Thursday, focus turns to the West Coast where a good deal of rain, wind and high elevation snow are on the way.

Weather watch

Western storm. California is ground zero for a storm moving into the western United States starting Wednesday. Wind alerts are up in the San Francisco region, where gusts up to 60 mph are expected along the coast with up to 50 mph inland. While the storm begins to arrive late Wednesday, the worst will focus on the region Thursday and then slide down the coast into Friday. Several inches of rain are possible from San Francisco to Los Angeles with heavy snow anticipated in the high elevations of the Sierra.

From winter to warmer. The early-season blast of cold air that enveloped the central and particularly eastern United States is waning. It caused a slew of records in the Southeast, including as far south as in and around Miami, where Tuesday’s record low of 48 was the first in a decade. In many places, temperatures will return nearer normal as soon as Wednesday or Thursday. Over the weekend, many of the hardest hit regions in the South will see temperatures about 10 to 15 degrees above normal.

Lightning links

UK’s Met Office yellow warnings for rain and wind amid flood threat. (Simon King, BBC)

What Caused The Chicago Lake-Effect Thundersnow? (The Weather Channel)

Arctic blast cold-stuns iguanas in Florida during record-setting temperature plunge. (Julian Atienza, FOX Weather)

Families of 9 Camp Mystic flooding victims file lawsuits alleging gross negligence after 27 girls and counselors died. (Pamela Brown, Shoshana Dubnow, Holly Yan, Eric Levenson and CNN)

Shimmering lights

The beginning of a series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — explosions of energy from the sun — arrived Tuesday evening Eastern time. Forecast to be a strong G3 — on a scale of 1 to 5 — the event struck with more punch than anticipated and put on a big show. It ended up hitting G4, or severe, stayed at that level for some time, and was close to a G5 storm in the end.

Aurora was photographed at least as far south as the border region of the United States and Mexico, the Gulf Coast and portions of Florida. It overcame city lights in many locations, and northern latitudes more frequented by the sky lights watched it dance to the south.

I caught some glimpses from D.C., for the second time in a year, though clouds and too many city lights mostly made me wish for more. Here’s a photo from nearby Great Falls.

Red aurora was dominant. They are typical of the strongest events, caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with the highest levels of Earth’s atmosphere, where infinitesimal amounts of oxygen are available to be disturbed and lit up.

Last night’s northern lights were caused by the first of Several X-class flares — the strongest of solar eruptions — directed at earth in recent days, sending the CMEs our way.

The most powerful of the group has yet to hit.

Current indications are that it will do so Wednesday afternoon in the Eastern time zone. That may mean it is most primed to deliver the next big show to the European and Asian continents, but details are often hard to pin down until the wave hits. The forecast calls for another G4 event.

While it will be hard to outdo last night’s event, it’s advisable to keep the cameras and smartphones charged and keep an eye on the sky as night falls.

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Weekday MWF morning newsletter by a journalist/forecaster. Connecting weather and climate change dots while occasionally stirring the pot.

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