A series of solar eruptions known as coronal mass ejections produced dazzling aurora light shows Tuesday evening. The eruptions sent material from the sun, including charged particles with a strong localized magnetic field, toward Earth at speeds of more than 1 million miles per hour, or more than 500 kilometers per second.
A solar ultraviolet image from one of NOAA's GOES weather satellites captured this type of coronal mass ejection from the Sun early Tuesday morning.
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Satellites detected the latest strong coronal mass ejection, accompanied by a bright solar flare, early Tuesday morning. It was expected to arrive on Earth on Wednesday.
“Two of the three expected coronal mass ejections have already arrived here on Earth,” Sean Dahl saidforecaster at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. The first two waves “dealt a real blow,” Dahl said, and were “significantly stronger than we expected.”
The storm produced northern lights that were visible as far south as Texas, Florida and Mexico Tuesday evening. Another round of northern lights may be visible Wednesday evening.
Wednesday's storm was the “most energetic” of any recent coronal mass ejection, Dahl said. It is also moving at a faster speed, fast enough to cross the 92 million mile long gulf between the Sun and Earth in less than two days. Forecasters are forecasting a G4, or severe, geomagnetic storm Wednesday through Thursday, with a slight chance of a rarer extreme G5 storm, which has already occurred. only happened once in the last two decades.
The Northern Lights light up the night sky over Monroe, Wisconsin, on November 11, 2025, during one of the strongest solar storms in decades.
Photo: Ross Harrid/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The sudden arrival of a stream of charged particles from the Sun could disrupt the Earth's magnetic field, affect power grids, degrade GPS navigation signals and disrupt radio communications. Geomagnetic storm G4 could cause “possible widespread voltage control problems” in terrestrial power grids, as well as potential problems with surface charging on satellites flying above the protective layers of the atmosphere, according to NOAA.
It is not easy to predict the exact effects of a geomagnetic storm until it reaches Earth's doorstep. Several satellites located a million miles from Earth in the direction of the Sun are equipped with sensors that can determine the speed of the solar wind, its charge and the direction of its magnetic field. This information helps forecasters know what to expect.
“These types of storms can be very different,” Dahl said.
