Northern Lights visible in Chicago on NYE?
- Thread starter BrianG
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Supposed to be a G3 watch, which is huge. But usually when that happens it happens to be cloudy because mother nature hates us. Cloud maps look like most of Illinois and Wisconsin are cloudy. If anything changes I will be heading into Wisconsin later.
Oh and the news is hyping it up. There are often temporary radio blackouts with Solar Flares. The only time it actually caused power surges or blackouts was back in like the 30's. I am not sure if we will ever have a flare that large in our lifetime.
Oh and the news is hyping it up. There are often temporary radio blackouts with Solar Flares. The only time it actually caused power surges or blackouts was back in like the 30's. I am not sure if we will ever have a flare that large in our lifetime.
I'm pretty sure electrical technology has changed a little bit since the 30's, a little bit of shielding at the supply and sub stations would prevent a blackout from a solar flare. If a flare were big enough to knockout the power grid we'd have problems that would make the power being out seem like nothing.
Well then.... So now the experts are saying we only got a small shockwave last night. They are saying that based on the current data, it could be a HUGE show tonight. Possibly seen in Texas. If the data continues I am going to have to forget my new years plans and head north. I won't be missing this if it's true. This would be an extremely rare event. A lot of the area is going to be cloudy but there are some areas in Wisconsin that won't be.
Here is the actual quote from Dan Miller
"We have finally transitioned from the shock phase of this CME into the main plasma cloud itself. The transition occurred between roughly 1230-100 PM CST. Based on the ACE data after the transition - a fairly major geomagnetic storm and auroral show seems very likely over the next 24 hours. The transition from the shock to the main plasma cloud is characterized by the exponential drop in solar wind density/protons. As this happened, Bt increased to near 20nT and Bz has dropped to near -18nT (see annotated image below). Once this transition occurs, only a slow rotation of the magnetic field vector typically happens through a 18-36 hour period - thus Bz will likely stay strongly negative for many hours, as it very slowly starts to recover back toward zero. There are no absolute guarantees with this type of forecasting, but this is about as confident as it gets. This is obviously very good news, as the real show should just be getting started this afternoon (US CST). THE BAD NEWS:: clouds are still going to be a major problem in most areas tonight - but if you can find clearing, there should be a pretty good show. I'll go out on a limb as say that it will probably be visible pretty far south in to the U.S. too - perhaps as far south as I40 - as long as these solar wind conditions persist into tonight (I think they will)."
Here is the actual quote from Dan Miller
"We have finally transitioned from the shock phase of this CME into the main plasma cloud itself. The transition occurred between roughly 1230-100 PM CST. Based on the ACE data after the transition - a fairly major geomagnetic storm and auroral show seems very likely over the next 24 hours. The transition from the shock to the main plasma cloud is characterized by the exponential drop in solar wind density/protons. As this happened, Bt increased to near 20nT and Bz has dropped to near -18nT (see annotated image below). Once this transition occurs, only a slow rotation of the magnetic field vector typically happens through a 18-36 hour period - thus Bz will likely stay strongly negative for many hours, as it very slowly starts to recover back toward zero. There are no absolute guarantees with this type of forecasting, but this is about as confident as it gets. This is obviously very good news, as the real show should just be getting started this afternoon (US CST). THE BAD NEWS:: clouds are still going to be a major problem in most areas tonight - but if you can find clearing, there should be a pretty good show. I'll go out on a limb as say that it will probably be visible pretty far south in to the U.S. too - perhaps as far south as I40 - as long as these solar wind conditions persist into tonight (I think they will)."
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