Aurora!
There is a significant change you can see an aurora around here tonight—assuming you get away from the infernal low clouds.
On Wednesday there was a major solar storm yesterday and the impact is starting to felt today in the earth’s upper atmosphere. Here is a plot from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC).
You can see the jump in the proton flux yesterday and if you look at the estimated Kp on the fourth line down (a measure of the disturbance of the earth’s magnetic field) we have a fairly major event (estimated K pvalues of around 8). The SWPC has a handy map in which they estimate how far south the aurora will go relative to the Kp number. Here is is:
The yellow line is for a Kp of 7 and it appears we have that….so the aurora could well be visible tonight if you have a view of the sky.
The NOAA polar orbiting satellite can actually view auroras and here is the latest graphic (2243 UTC, 3:43 PM our time). The reddish color indicates the aurora and the position of solar noon by the red arrow.
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