Strong solar activity could make the northern lights visible in roughly two dozen states on Tuesday, Jan. 20.
According to an alert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), a severe geomagnetic storm — a major disturbance of the region in space surrounding Earth — is expected to make for a stronger aurora than usual.
The cause of the increased geomagnetic activity, a coronal mass ejection — large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun — reached Earth around 2 p.m. EST on Jan. 19, Shawn Dahl, SWPC's service coordinator, said in a post on X.
The event is measuring as severe on two of NOAA's geomagnetic storm scales. On the K-index scale — which indicates how far away from the poles the northern lights could be visible — NOAA is predicting an 8 out of 9. On another, the agency ranks the event a G4.
It comes after several states in the southern U.S., including Alabama and New Mexico, caught a glimpse of the aurora borealis on Monday, Jan. 19.
