the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, if Mother Nature cooperates New Jersey residents could see nighttime sky glow just a bit this weekend. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center—a division of the National Weather Service—is monitoring the sun and solar winds following a significant solar flare and Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from the sun that occurred around 11:35 a.m. EDT on Oct. 28. The event is predicted to be a strong geomagnetic storm arriving at earth on Oct. 30. After careful analysis of all available data, the Center issued a Geomagnetic Storm Watch, which remains in effect through Oct 31.
In Simple terms a geomagnetic storm could make the Northern Lights aka aurora borealis visible in New Jersey on Saturday night and possibly also on Sunday night.
NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite captured the eruption on the sun. Space Weather Prediction Center forecasters are continuously monitoring NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite and its real time solar winds for signs of the arrival of the strong geomagnetic storm.
The Space Weather Prediction Center notified power grid operators, satellite operators, airlines and other customers about potential impacts of a geomagnetic storm. Geomagnetic storms on earth can affect electrical grids, GPS navigation systems and radio and satellite telecommunications. CMEs are a burst of charged particles and magnetic fields that stream out from the sun at millions of miles an hour.
