Northern Lights Light up the Sky Monday Night

An X-Class solar flare that erupted from the sun on Saturday sent a burst of color to the skies over the United States and Canada into Tuesday morning! Even some offices of the National Weather Service (above) were treated to some amazing sights overnight.

The solar flare, visible above from NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), was quite strong and may have produced an earth-directed coronal mass ejection, or CME. The partial halo CME was thought to hit the earth's atmosphere late Sunday night, showed up a little tardy. With a later arrival, the aurora borealis activity peaked Monday night into Tuesday morning.

Timing and magnitude of the CME can vary often, so we recommend monitoring activity in real time to judge how strong/visible aurora activity may be anytime we have CMEs heading this way. The Space Weather Prediction Center is only expecting G1 conditions Tuesday night.

With G4 conditions occur, aurora borealis activity will be possible down to the mid-latitudes, with some issues to power systems and communications equipment possible.