It’s not often you see “major” and “severe” geomagnetic storms in the space weather forecast, but here it is:
“Quiet to severe storm levels on day one (9 Jan.), unsettled to severe storm levels on day two (10 Jan.) …”
These dates are Greenwich time so Jan. 9 means sometime overnight tonight (Jan. 8-9) for U.S. and Canadian time zones. All this excitement is brought to you by the current huge sunspot group known as Active Region 1944, which contains one of the biggest sunspots seen in years.
The entire works spans some 125,000 miles (200,000 km) or more than 15 times the size of the Earth. It’s spawned multiple M-class (moderate) flares and at least one X-class (strong) flare in the past couple days, sending high-speed streams of protons and electrons in Earth’s direction.
There’s an 80% chance of additional M-class and 50% chance of X-class flare from this very active group in the coming days. Sunspot groups are regions on the sun’s surface where magnetic energy is strongly concentrated like a giant bar magnet with north and south poles. In simple groups, the positive and negative magnetic poles are separated from one another and not likely to come in contact and cause trouble. Astronomers say these groups have a “beta” magnetic classification.
Huge complicated groups like 1944 have a beta-gamma-delta magnetic field where spots of opposite polarities lie near one another with no clear division between them. This is where things get volatile. The more complicated a sunspot group’s magnetic field becomes, the greater the potential for magnetic mischief. Opposite polarities can interact in the churnin’, burnin’ solar soup and spawn strong flares.
When those speedy particles arrive and hook in to Earth’s magnetic field, which we dearly hope will happen, they spiral toward our magnetic poles, crashing into air molecules and exciting them to fluoresce as northern lights.
Let’s hope that transpires either tonight or tomorrow night. The moon – now just over half – won’t be enough to wash out the sky like a full moon would, and it sets just after 1 a.m., leaving a completely dark sky. Cross your fingers and get ready – the sky may go electric tonight. It’s clear here in Duluth, Minn., so I’ll be monitoring and updating.
UPDATE: 9:30 a.m. CST today: Expected northern lights didn’t happen overnight. Nothing seen from Duluth, Minn.. Chances are even better for auroras to break out tonight, so don’t give up the vigil. I’ll update later today.