The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center has forecast a “severe solar storm” expected to hit Earth this evening, according to a statement. These geomagnetic storms occur from time to time, but as the Sun approaches the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, space weather becomes more intense.
A geomagnetic storm occurs when solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occur on the Sun, causing a variation in the solar wind to strike the Earth’s magnetosphere, the protective sheath of the Earth’s magnetic field.
At their best, storms cause fascinating but harmless auroras as charged particles from the Sun collide with the particles that make up Earth’s atmosphere along its magnetic poles, emitting visible light. But in the worst cases, storms can disrupt land-based navigation systems like GPS and trigger disruptions in infrastructure like the power grid and radio and satellite communications.
The upcoming storm was given a severe rating (G4) by the Space Weather Prediction Center and triggered a geomagnetic storm watch, the first time since January 2005 that such a warning has been issued. The center predicts that at least five CMEs will be aimed at Earth between noon today, May 10, and Sunday, May 12. The Sun produced a strong solar flare on Thursday, specifically an X1.1 flare; “Class X denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength,” according to NASA. Earlier today, NOAA documented an even stronger solar flare, classified as strong flare X2.2.
Experts from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center gave a press conference to discuss the storm and its potential impacts today at 10 a.m. ET. You can read all the details of this press conference here.
“We have a very rare event on our hands,” Shawn Dahl, space weather forecaster at SWPC, said during the press conference. “The key point here is that critical infrastructure operators have been informed and the activity is not over.”
According to a NOAA Chart, several recent flares on the Sun over the past week are associated with a large sunspot cluster about 16 times larger than Earth. You can actually observe this sunspot yourself using eclipse glasses, if you have a pair (just make sure they’re safe to use!)
Since the current solar cycle began in December 2019, NOAA has observed only three severe geomagnetic storms, the most recent (also rated G4) occurring in March 2024. The latest G5 geomagnetic storm – one level more severe – occurred in October 2003 and caused power outages in Scandinavia and damaged infrastructure as far away as South Africa, according to the same graph.
The Sun’s intensity waxes and wanes over an 11-year cycle, meaning the current solar cycle won’t be complete until 2030. As Gizmodo reported in 2022, our somewhat unpredictable star is a real problem for scientists. satellite operators, whose off-Earth infrastructure is particularly exposed to solar fluctuations. We’ll learn more about the impacts of the ongoing solar event soon, but hopefully we’ll have beautiful auroras without any infrastructural chaos.
Read more: When will there be a new solar superstorm?
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