While it has been fairly quiet here at Earth, Solar Cycle 25 has been chugging along since last October when we last saw some aurora visit North Georgia. Our next chance may be on its way on Wednesday night.
Early Tuesday, the sun released a strong X5 solar flare from Sunspot Group 4274. This is the 6th strongest Earth side flare of the solar cycle, and the strongest since October 3, 2024 when an X9.0 flare occurred.
Tuesday’s flare produced a very large Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME, that is directly aimed at Earth. You can see it in this animation below moving quickly away from the sun.
This CME will be running right on the tale of two other CMEs that are also heading our direction from a pair of X1 flares over the past couple of days. We are awaiting more information from NOAA analysts, but the latest release from them indicates that this CME is moving very fast. The lead edge left the sun moving about 4.4 million mph with the core moving a bit slower at 3.3 million mph. The bulk of the mass will slow down some on its way towards Earth, but the two previous CMEs likely “cleared the road”, so to speak.
NOAA has indicated the potential for a G4 or greater watch to be issued for late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, and/or Wednesday night. If the faster speeds are accurate, the storm would arrive before sunrise on Wednesday, but a slower speed could result in a morning or afternoon arrival. Early forecasts, seen below, indicate the potential for a KP index (a way we measure geomagnetic storm strength) of 7 or 8. At these levels, aurora can make it quite far south, especially in photographs.
For us here in North Georgia, we need to hope for a slightly slower arrival time to coincide with the dark skies before the moon rises Wednesday night. Aurora are highly unlikely to be naked eye visible, but much like last May and October the storms could make for some great photos.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on the forecast, but keep your fingers crossed! Stay tuned for additional updates including better nailed down timing and tips on taking photos later!
