( NYPost )
The powerful geomagnetic storm that will make the northern lights visible to much of the US has been upgraded to a Level 5, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric announced in an updated warning.
“Extreme” G5 conditions reached Earth from the sun shortly before 7 p.m. Friday night — the first geomagnetic storm of such magnitude since Halloween 2003, according to the federal agency.
That storm resulted in power outages in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa, NOAA said.
A G5 geomagnetic storm can cause “widespread voltage control problems and protective system problems can occur, some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts,” according to NOAA’s storm scale.
A Level 6 K-index is expected through Saturday evening, which means the storm could impact the power grid at latitudes north of 55 degrees, which is north of the contiguous United States.
GPS systems, satellite navigation and other technologies could also be impacted.
The K-scale “quantifies disturbances in the earth’s magnetic field with an integer in the range 0-9 with 1 being calm and 5 or more indicating a geomagnetic storm,” according to the agency.
“We’re monitoring the potential impacts of this geomagnetic storm, which will continue through Monday morning,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
“State personnel are coordinating with industry stakeholders & the federal government. There have been no reported impacts to the electrical grid or radio communications,” she added.
The rare phenomenon will make the northern lights visible as far south as Alabama.
Visibility will be best around midnight, but will largely depend on the amount of cloud coverage and light population, which will make the light show impossible to see for Big Apple residents, Fox News meteorologist Samantha Thomas told The Post.
The aurora can be viewed across a massive arc spanning North America: from Virginia to southern Alabama, covering Colorado and ending in Northern California, with the clearest visibility available to the more northern states.
The lights will glimmer from roughly sundown to sunrise.
Breathtaking scenes of the spectacle poured in from across the globe on social media.
One video, shared by the BBC, shows otherworldly pink and purple hues shining down on the snow-covered Bernese Alps.
Stateside in Maine, photographer Benjamin Williamson snapped an incredible shot of a coastal lighthouse against the green, blue and purple sky.
The incredible aurora even blessed viewers in war-torn Ukraine over Kharkiv and the Russian-occupied Donetsk, region images show.
Geomagnetic storms are caused by strong energy pulses released from the sun that slam against our planet.
The source of this storm has been traced to a vast sunspot cluster that’s 17 times the diameter of Earth, according to NOAA.
Geomagnetic storms have become increasingly common over the past year as the sun reaches its maximum phase of its solar cycle — the sequence in which the star’s magnetic field flips every 11 years and sends particles hurtling toward Earth.
The current event, Solar Cycle 25, began in 2019 and could last until 2030.
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