The solar maximum continues to deliver. As the Sun is experiencing its peak of activity, coronal mass ejections and solar flares are happening more and more often. One of those plasma releases is now on its way to Earth, where it is expected to cause a minor geomagnetic storm today and a more sizable one tomorrow.

We shouldn’t expect to see a spectacle like the one we have witnessed in May 2024, but aurorae to lower latitudes than usual can be expected. The May event was exceptional because three coronal mass ejections merged into a single cannibal coronal mass ejection reaching the level of an extreme geomagnetic storm. We won’t be getting something quite as strong this weekend.

In the US, aurorae might become visible across some of the Northern and upper Midwest states from New York to Idaho. In Europe, it could reach down across Ireland, Wales, the Mid-to-North of the UK, Scandinavia and the Baltic states, as well as the North of Germany and Poland. In the Southern hemisphere, both Tasmania in Australia and part of the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand should get some Southern Lights.

Coronal mass ejections are tremendous releases of electrically charged plasma from the Sun launched at a very high speed across interplanetary space. These events can be damaging to our technology – both satellites in space and electrical infrastructure on Earth. The positive is that we get stunning aurorae across the higher latitudes.