New aurora activity

Sunspot 720 sent out a big solar flare with yet another CME coming our way. The flare was an X3. The Space Environment Center (SEC) is currently reporting a G3 geomagnetic storm, probably from the previous flares. According to http://www.spaceweather.com the storm is going to hit sometime on the 18th or 19th.

Hopefully it will be powerful enough to see in central Illinois. The storm last November was unbelievable!
 
Tonight is the BIG one. I can feel it, lol. JINX.....sorry all. I predict it will start at 4 p.m. central and last right up until sunset. The clouds will go away just in time to see it go bye bye. Seriously though, good things are going to happen tonight in the Aurora department. I am not sure I've ever seen them mention possible extreme geo storming. Usually they stop at strong to severe and let it do what it will do. The one that got us on the 7th of November wasn't even an X class flare was it?

[Broken External Image]:http://www.sec.noaa.gov/ftpdir/plots/2004_plots/xray/20041106_xray.gif
 
I'm excited about tonight, but I'm worried about clouds. The last couple of nights, we've had clear skies (for the most part) up until about 1:00 AM, at which point it goes from clear to overcast in about a half hour's time. It looks like we might be starting off with cloud cover tonight. Bah.

If it's clear, though, I might go ahead and drive north of town and get away from the city lights. I mean, I look at those shots you got from Blair back in November, and that's only 30 miles up the road, so it's not like I'd have to go far to find dark skies. I guess I could drive west or east, for that matter, but might as well head north and get Omaha behind me.
 
Yeah Jeff even if you were to drive east or northeast a bit it should get better. The ones last time were seen smack in the middle of Omaha, but of course not as well. I think you'd be fine on the north side of Council Bluffs. That is if it isn't as cloudy as it is right now. Might actually have to make a bit of a drive for this one tonight. Looks like Norfolk or Yankton should be clear by sunset. At least it will be warmer!
 
I wonder if this is worth another late night in the desert. I'm at the 34th parallel but during the last big show, a faint red glow was seen out of Flagstaff, so there might be a shot. I'll watch the indices and see. Wouldn't that be a trip if it was seen this far south (it has before, in Payson, 1 hour up the road from my town).
 
Impact! It is herrrreeeeeeeee. Solar wind speed just went from crawl to near max. Now 2 more steps, Bz needs to go south and clouds need to go with it.
 
Sigh...I'm completely socked in here. And given the bit of snowmelt that occurred today, we're probably in for some fog, even if the cloud cover does manage to beat it (which, looking at IR, seems unlikely).
 
Can't the aurora wait until after this snow system has moved out of here? Looks like we will still be socked in with clouds tomorrow. Ai ya!
 
Yeah, field indices are hopping all over the place - a major storm indeed. Might still be going strong by the time sunset gets here - but clouds will be a problem for many of us. Maybe Mike will be able to capture some more eye candy for us.

Glen
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Jeff Duda
Isentropic surfaces
Replies
10
Views
29K
Ashwin D
Danny Neal
How to successfully intercept a tornado and how to determine tornado vs. no tornado.
2
Replies
20
Views
12K
Jordan Hartley
Danny Neal
CHASE CASE #3
10 11 12 13 14
Replies
206
Views
33K
John Farley
John Farley
08/07/09 FCST: NE, SD, ND, MN, IA, WI, IL
Replies
10
Views
2K
afischer
afischer
cdcollura
2004-05-22:Hallam, NE tornadoes
Replies
9
Views
26K
Alex Carroll
Back
Top