Northern Lights May Be Visible in These States This Week

The northern lights may be visible in some northern and upper Midwest states on Wednesday, after a type of explosion on the Sun.

A coronal mass ejection (CME) took place on Sunday, meaning there was a huge ejection of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s corona, typically caused by a build-up of magnetic energy.

The plasma released on Monday appears dark because it is cooler and more dense than the sun beneath it. This plume of plasma then formed the core of a coronal mass ejection that is forecast to hit the Earth on Wednesday.

This is expected to spark a geomagnetic storm on Wednesday, which can cause weak power grid fluctuations, minor impacts on satellite operations, and it may also result in the northern lights being visible.

The storm was initially forecast to measure at G1- the weakest form of geomagnetic storm on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Scale, which goes up to G5. The NOAA has, at time of writing, upgraded this forecast to G2, issuing a G2 Geomagnetic Storm Watch for Wednesday “due to the likely arrival of a halo CME that erupted on July 21.”

The Special Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, said: “The aurora may become visible over some northern and upper Midwest states from New York to Idaho.”

These could include Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Space weather physicist Tamitha Skov previously told Newsweek: “Sadly, these solar storms are often fashionably late, and with all the ‘traffic’ this one will endure on its way to Earth, I wouldn’t be surprised if the storm doesn’t arrive until late on July 24.

“By ‘traffic’ I mean a lot of slow solar wind is ahead of this CME and it has to push through all of this during its journey, which tends to slow the storm down a bit compared to the model predictions.

G1 storms occur relatively frequently, often multiple times a year, while G5 ones are very rare: the G5 storm on May 10 was the first “extreme” geomagnetic storm since 2003.

“A geomagnetic storm is the alteration of the Earth’s magnetic environment, this means when the magnetic fields that usually surround our Earth start to be distorted,” Daniel Brown, an associate professor in astronomy and science communication at Nottingham Trent University, previously told Newsweek.

“The amount of matter ejected, its speed, the associated magnetic fields, as well as how they interact with other already emitted particles from the sun, all add up to a bumpy environment moving outwards from the sun for our Earth’s magnetic field to travel through,” Brown said. “The more prolonged, the stronger the interaction will be and the higher the likelihood of a strong geomagnetic storm.”