Aurora Occurring Tonight!

A significant solar event is occurring and an aurora is visible to the north over northern Washington State right now.

Here is a recent image from Greg Johnson's Skunk Bay Weather website:


And the latest NOAA Space Weather Aurora forecast for 11:30 PM shows the core of it just north of us.

NOAA's Space Weather Center had put out a geomagnetic solar storm watch, which has clearly verified.  Over the weekend a coronal mass ejection (CME)...or solar flare... erupted on the sun's surface and raced towards the earth.  The interactions of this ejection from the sun and the Earth's magnetic field resulted in the aurora, which was visible over the northern U.S. and Canada.


A measure of the amplitude of the solar event is the Kp index, which has reached a fairly high level of 6:



Do you want a real treat?  Here is a video of the aurora action from Skunk Bay:



The skies are generally clear over Washington and southern BC, so we are in a good situation to view the celestial show. A good opportunity.

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