Geomagnetic storm and Northern Lights over Italy: here’s what’s happening

Experts thought that the geomagnetic storm of October 1st and with effects today, Friday October 4th, would be the strongest of this period but the Sun surprised everyone with another blasting occurred even …

"Three days of blackout for satellites and GPS".  It's a solar storm warning


Experts thought that the geomagnetic storm of October 1st and with effects today, Friday October 4th, would be the strongest of this period but the Sun surprised everyone with another blasting occurred even more strongly in the last few hours and with effects especially on the night of Sunday 6 October when theNorthern Lightsa very rare phenomenon in our latitudes.

The very powerful flare

They were the scientists of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center to break the news on social media and on the official web account: for this reason warnings were issued “of G3 (strong) geomagnetic storm for the period from 4 to 6 October due to a pair of coronal mass ejections expected to arrive over the next three days“. In detail, if yesterday we talked about a solar eruption with a value of X 9.1basically the strongest of the solar cycle. For those who don’t know, flares caused by X-rays have a scale with the letters of the alphabet A, B, C, M and X with the latter being the strongest of all. The numbers then indicate the further degree of intensity.

What happened

Once again, after a few hours, a very strong event occurred on the surface of the Sun coronal mass ejection: as we have seen it is a “Giant solar plasma cloud laced with magnetic field lines, swept away from the Sun often during filament eruptions and flares

strong and long-lasting sunscreens”, explain the experts. As the Sun’s activity increases towards solar maximum, coronal mass ejections become more common and we can see several per day.”.

The direct consequences

We now know that the stronger a geomagnetic storm is, the greater the telecommunications problems may be with interruptions to radio frequencies but also malfunctions of GPS systems. If this is the other side of the coin, from the other side one can observe even at unusual latitudes a phenomenon much loved by adults and children, theNorthern Lights. Our country has already experienced this extraordinary phenomenon last May but the opportunity could arise again in a few days, especially in the night between Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 October as indicated by the experts. Even from a weather point of view we should be lucky: clear or slightly cloudy skies on Sunday night, all that remains is to look at the sky in a northerly direction to find out if and where, in Italy, we can observe the aurora.