Alaska News

Solar storm bombards Earth, could trigger auroral displays

On Sunday night, the sun discharged a massive solar flare, even larger than the one that had occurred just three days prior. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted radiation could blast Earth on Tuesday, generating the most powerful electromagnetic storm since 2005.

The storm blasted out into space around 7 p.m. Alaska Standard Time on Sunday, according to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. On an geomagnetic intensity scale of G1-G5, the storm expected to wallop the home planet Tuesday is a G2 or G3. By comparison, a Jan. 19 flareup led to increased auroral activity around higher latitudes, including Alaska (although the weather wasn't entirely cooperative). That flare produced a G1 storm.

"This is the strongest radiation storm since May, 2005 and the enhanced conditions are expected to last through Wednesday," NOAA reported. "High latitudes have a possibility of even stronger, isolated geomagnetic storming."

High latitudes? Sounds like good odds for Alaskans who were thwarted by the cloud cover over the weekend, while the other recent flare was causing veiled auroral displays throughout the state. NASA's Goddard Space Center is predicting that aurora could be visible even at lower latitudes than normal.

The storm's projected magnitude caused Kathy Sullivan, deputy administrator of NOAA, to announce that polar flights would be rerouted in advance of its arrival, according to Space.com.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute's Aurora Forecast page was predicting "Extreme" auroral activity on Tuesday and "moderate" activity for Wednesday, with the Aurora visible possibly all the way to the Kenai Peninsula.

"Models predict that the Coronal Mass Ejection is moving at almost 1,400 miles per second," the Goddard Space Center reported, "and could reach Earth's magnetosphere -- the magnetic envelope that surrounds Earth -- as early as tomorrow, Jan 24 at 9 AM ET (plus or minus 7 hours)."

The weather might again be uncooperative for the upcoming show: the National Weather Service was predicting partly sunny or mostly cloudy for most of the state on Tuesday. Keep an eye on the weather in your area, here.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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