Strong aurora forecast tonight May 10-11

[PakledHostage]

I had to get up early for a lesson that I couldn't be tired for, so I had to sleep through it. The internet abounds with beautiful photos from the local area, so it was clearly a good show.

[mikegarrison]

I went outside on my front lawn and saw nothing but some wispy clouds. Then I realized the clouds were flickering.

Other people around me have pictures of sheets of color, but apparently these were taken with "night mode" on their cameras. To the naked eye it was dim enough that there was little or no color.

Still, most of the time these storms hit, it is cloudy in Seattle. This was the first one that happened that I could see with the naked eye.

[PakledHostage]

I should add that I went flying yesterday evening and it seemed to be messing with the VHF reception. We could hear ATC and ATC could hear us, but we couldn't hear any other aircraft on the frequency.  I was talking to a HAM radio guy today and he agreed that the solar storm was probably to blame. This event was clearly extraordinary,  but how does it stack up compared to something like the Carrington Event? During that event, auroras were also reportedly visible into the tropics. This must have been close in some regards?

[DDE]

1 hour ago, PakledHostage said:

I should add that I went flying yesterday evening and it seemed to be messing with the VHF reception.

NOAA reports R3-level radio disruption, yes.

1 hour ago, PakledHostage said:

This event was clearly extraordinary,  but how does it stack up compared to something like the Carrington Event? During that event, auroras were also reportedly visible into the tropics. This must have been close in some regards?

Back then, they reached the equator. The difference in the intensity of the disturbance was something like sevenfold, judging by the numbers I'd skimmed over today.

[Nuke]

overcast tonight. cant see anything.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Aurora expected again Sunday night.  10pm - 2am is the ideal time.  

Actually they might continue through the week but Sunday will be the best due to the intensity and phase of the moon.  Friday was almost New while today will be almost 1/5th.  Intensity expected to drop in the coming days. 

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/auroras-expected-continue-week-view-us-rcna151840

 

I got nothing last night even with clear skies. 

[Nuke]

weather forcast is worse tomorrow. i live in a raintforest so its not like this is unexpected. only time you really get a chance to see the northern lights is in winter when its too cold to rain, usually.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Actually they might continue through the week

Here's hoping. I'm headed off to almost 60° North tomorrow. This somewhat improves my chances, although the midnight glow from the sun might interfere a bit.

[magnemoe]

On 5/12/2024 at 12:08 AM, DDE said:

NOAA reports R3-level radio disruption, yes.

Back then, they reached the equator. The difference in the intensity of the disturbance was something like sevenfold, judging by the numbers I'd skimmed over today.

Just 7 times stronger? I would expect orders of magnitude as this just disturbed some radio not generating significant electricity in telegraph wires. 
Now it might be that power cables will not be significantly impacted as they already carry high voltage and current. Signal cables on the other hand is.

[DDE]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13411341/northern-lights-premier-inn-lights-tiktok.html

...Why is this in the Femail section? I believe everyone involved is either male or a tuber.

[DeadJohn]

This is the best photo I took of the aurora. Heavy clouds limited my view but a slim 5 degrees above the horizon stayed clear so I barely saw it.

20240510-IMGP6135-Enhanced-NR.jpg by John Speroni, on Flickr

 

[tater]

39 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

This is the best photo I took of the aurora. Heavy clouds limited my view but a slim 5 degrees above the horizon stayed clear so I barely saw it.

Wow!

[darthgently]

54 minutes ago, tater said:

Wow!

Yeah, the clouds make it something even better

[Vanamonde]

That's really spectacular, @DeadJohn.

[Brotoro]

It looks like it's raining plasma.

[darthgently]

As good a short description as any

6 hours ago, Brotoro said:

It looks like it's raining plasma.

 

[PakledHostage]

On 5/11/2024 at 3:08 PM, DDE said:

The difference in the intensity of the disturbance was something like sevenfold, judging by the numbers I'd skimmed over today.

Anton Petrov has posted a new video on this topic. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I'll leave the link: 

 

[Superfluous J]

Oh look a YouTube video with a scary title that gets out of lying by posing it as a question.

The short answer is yes and no.

Yes we survived. No it was not a Carrington Event. Yes we would have survived if it had been a Carrington Event. There I saved you 30 minutes and a couple dozen ads*.

*I assume. I didn't load the video to see how long it was or how interspersed with ads it was.

**Yes I'm a curmudgeon.

***No these asterisks don't correspond with anything above.

[PakledHostage]

37 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Oh look a YouTube video with a scary title that gets out of lying by posing it as a question.

I agree it's a click-baity title, but he's a well known and not bad pop science channel.

Edit @Superfluous J: I just took the time to watch it (I was somewhere noisy earlier when I posted the link) and it's as expected. About 14 minutes long, well presented and informative. I didn't see a single ad (and I don't have YouTube Prime, or whatever that's called). Maybe give him a chance, rather than judge the book by the cover (so to speak)?

Edited May 17 by PakledHostage

[cubinator]

10 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Oh look a YouTube video with a scary title that gets out of lying by posing it as a question.

The short answer is yes and no.

Yes we survived. No it was not a Carrington Event. Yes we would have survived if it had been a Carrington Event. There I saved you 30 minutes and a couple dozen ads*.

*I assume. I didn't load the video to see how long it was or how interspersed with ads it was.

**Yes I'm a curmudgeon.

***No these asterisks don't correspond with anything above.

Usually what I do with his channel is I click on the video, pause it, and then go read from his citations linked in the description. He's all right, but likes to focus on more speculative topics than I care for, in a way that leads uninformed viewers to wild conclusions. (For instance, there was a video about extremely massive asteroids recently that came from a study that used a notoriously imprecise method and had to throw out 90% of its data for giving unrealistically high mass estimates for asteroids...but for some reason THESE unrealistically high estimates are OK)

And I don't stand for clickbait, even when the video would otherwise be fairly good.

[darthgently]

36 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Usually what I do with his channel is I click on the video, pause it, and then go read from his citations linked in the description. He's all right, but likes to focus on more speculative topics than I care for, in a way that leads uninformed viewers to wild conclusions. (For instance, there was a video about extremely massive asteroids recently that came from a study that used a notoriously imprecise method and had to throw out 90% of its data for giving unrealistically high mass estimates for asteroids...but for some reason THESE unrealistically high estimates are OK)

And I don't stand for clickbait, even when the video would otherwise be fairly good.

Anton is eccentric and certainly relies on clicks for his income, but he does monitor a wide range of stuff so I keep tabs on his content.  I almost wrote a script to auto deliver to him a count of uses of "sort of", "kind of", "basically", and other content-free filler words based on the caption text stream for each video as a form of constructive feedback as it was driving me nutz.  Then the very next video was the one where he announced the death of his infant son and I bailed on it feeling very small.   Very Bad Timing, glad I caught it.  But a few years have passed since and the idea keeps occurring to me lately.