The Northern Lights may be visible again tonight, but may be fainter. Peak times are 10 PM to 2 AM. See pics below of last night’s event.
In an extraordinarily rare event, residents of Greene County were treated to a stunning display of the northern lights on Friday night. A powerful geomagnetic solar storm caused the evening sky to light up with greens, reds, and violets for about an hour.
The northern lights, scientifically termed aurora borealis, are a natural phenomenon characterized by vibrant displays of colorful lights in the night sky. These lights are caused by charged particles from the Sun colliding with atoms and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light.
Friday’s remarkable display was made possible by a dramatic blast from the Sun, which triggered the highest level geomagnetic storm in Earth’s atmosphere since Halloween of 2003. This solar storm, the most powerful in nearly two decades, has the potential to make the northern lights visible as far south as Florida and Southern California and could interfere with power grids, communications, and navigation systems.
Hundreds of members of the Radio Greeneville Text Club shared their photos from around Greene County. We picked the best and clearest ones and posted them to our webpage at wgrv.com.
While Friday night’s display was a sight to behold, there is a chance that the northern lights may grace the night sky once again on Saturday night. However, experts caution that the intensity of the display is not expected to be as pronounced as it was on Friday.
The effects of the solar storm are expected to persist through the weekend, and the Northern Lights could be visible again. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), issued an unusual solar storm watch on Thursday, upgraded to a warning on Friday. The agency has detected multiple outbursts on the Sun’s surface since Wednesday, with at least five heading towards Earth, the first of which reached the planet’s atmosphere on Friday.
Mike Bettwy, operations chief at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, stated at a news conference on Friday morning, “What we’re expecting over the next couple of days should be more significant than what we’ve seen certainly so far.”
The most notable solar storm recorded in history occurred in 1859. Known as the Carrington Event, it lasted for nearly a week, creating aurora that stretched down to Hawaii and Central America and impacting hundreds of thousands of miles of telegraph lines.
