Thursday, December 31, 2015

Incoming Solar Magnetic Storm To Light Up New Year's Eve

by JASmius



Not that we'll see it in the Pacific Northwest, as in order to see the Aurora Borealis anywhere, you need an absence of cloud cover, and we won't see blue sky here again until approximately Memorial Day.  So we'll just have to experience it vicariously, like describing a rainbow to a blind man:

Typically, the new year is met with fireworks lighting up the sky, but this year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said a powerful solar storm, set to hit Earth [Sol III] today, will make for "stunning views of the Northern Lights just before New Year's Eve," ABC News reports.

On a scale from one to five, the NOAA is classifying the solar storm as a G3 event — powerful enough for the Northern Lights to dip as far south as Oregon and Illinois.

But not California, where there are never any cloud anymore.  Sorry, fruit loops.   But then, with a G5 or worse, we'd be looking at a natural EMP event that could overwhelm our planet's magnetic field,  destroy our electrical grid, and wipe out most life on the planet.  So I think y'all can find a way to live with it.



Unlike our damned cloud cover.

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