Northern Lights Forecast: Will the aurora borealis be visible over the DC area Saturday?
WASHINGTON - Could the Northern Lights be visible over the DC area Saturday night?
Another solar storm hitting the Earth this weekend has prompted the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue a Geomagnetic Storm Watch for Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1.
During a geomagnetic storm, outbursts of plasma from solar flares can occur. Each eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection, can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
READ MORE: Northern lights forecast for DC, MD, VA
If strong enough, the outbursts can interfere with radio transmissions or cause outages to GPS satellites. Earlier this month, an extremely strong solar storm resulted in NOAA issuing a rare Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch. This weekend, the agency issued a (G2) Geomagnetic Storm Watch which is less severe and not uncommon.
Today is the first day of "meteorological summer" and NOAA says the solar flare could make for great aurora viewing over some northern and upper Midwest states from New York to Idaho. But, unfortunately, aurora viewing is not expected in the DMV region.
The lights were visible over our region during a G5-level storm — the highest on the scale — back on May 10.
In that instance, at least five of those flares were associated with CMEs, or coronal mass ejections, which are explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun’s corona. The CMEs that were spotted appear to be directed toward earth and could trigger geomagnetic storms.