Solar storm brings spectacular aurora to parts of United States

Residents in Colorado, Georgia, Virginia, and Arkansas were treated to an unusual celestial display Monday night.

A solar storm hit the earth Monday afternoon, pushing shimmering solar auroras to places where they might be visible to more people.

A blast of magnetic plasma shot out of the sun at a speed far faster than usual, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, causing the biggest solar storm the earth has seen definitely since March, but potentially since September 2005.

Auroras, more commonly called Northern Lights, are usually only seen at very high latitudes, but since Monday have been observed in the United States as far south as states like Georgia, Colorado, Virginia, and Arkansas, according to spaceweather.com, a website written by Dr. Tony Phillips of Science@NASA.

The solar storm, NOAA space weather physicist Doug Biesecker said, had not done any reported damage as of Monday, but probably caused current fluctuations in GPS and the electrical grid. He said the storm could last for more than a day.

Joe Kunches, director of space weather services at Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates, wrote in the Washington Post that those hoping to spot the lights should track a metric called the K-Index.

“The larger the K-Index, the farther south the aurora is dipping,” Mr. Kunches said, adding that mid-Atlantic states should look for an index of at least 8 – a threshold that is higher for southern states, and lower for northern states.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Solar storm brings spectacular aurora to parts of United States
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0623/Solar-storm-brings-spectacular-aurora-to-parts-of-United-States
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe