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Keep your eyes on the skies: Vancouver Islanders could be in for some dancing aurora borealis this weekend — and potentially some power outages.
“Space weather is hard to predict … it’s complicated — but get outside and have a look,” said Justin Albert, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Victoria.
The effects of what is being called an exceptionally strong solar storm could bring the northern lights to many parts of Canada and possibly cause damage to high-voltage power lines and satellites that could disrupt some communications. Canada’s space weather agency issued a warning Friday as a “major geomagnetic storm” hit the country.
Space Weather Canada said the storm associated with massive solar flares was striking all of Canada on Friday afternoon.
The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration issued its first geomagnetic storm watch since 2005 and said the storm was a “potentially historic event.”
Such events can cause faults in power grids, and Space Weather Canada said major storms like the one hitting Friday were also associated with very high risk of effects on geostationary satellites, and potential severe disruption to activities involving geomagnetism, including aerial surveys and directional drilling.
Albert said Islanders could see some northern lights if they look to magnetic north in the skies Friday night and tonight.
“You don’t have to go to the top of a mountain or a tall building,” he said. “Look up and if you see any green … enjoy it. It doesn’t happen very often.”
The storm could produce northern lights as far south in the U.S. as Alabama and right across southern Canada, according to NOAA. But it is hard to predict accurately, and experts stressed it would not be the dramatic curtains of colour normally associated with the northern lights, but more like splashes of green.
Robyn Fiori, a research scientist at the Canadian Hazards Information Service of Natural Resources Canada, said the storm is being caused by “coronal mass ejections” from the sun, sending vast amounts of solar matter toward Earth. Each eruption, the result of solar flares, can contain billions of tonnes of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
Fiori said three such ejections were “piggybacking on each other” to deliver a “really big blow” to the planet. One had arrived Friday and the other two were expected overnight, she said.
“When that [coronal mass ejection] arrives, our magnetic field starts to fluctuate and those fluctuations can have impacts in power systems … there can always be a danger that there could be an outage to the power system if these fluctuations get to be too big.”
A spokesman for B.C. Hydro said it has been preparing for the storm, and such events can potentially cause serious damage to high-voltage transmission systems, leading to outages. Kevin Aquino said while those effects aren’t expected, B.C. Hydro staff are monitoring for any impacts.
Although the storm poses a risk for high-voltage transmission lines for power grids, it doesn’t threaten the electrical lines ordinarily found in people’s homes, NOAA said.
Space Weather Canada said the storm warning would be downgraded late Friday to a storm watch that will last until this afternoon.
The most intense solar storm in recorded history, in 1859, prompted auroras in Central America and even Hawaii. An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003 took out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa. A geomagnetic storm caused a nine-hour power outage across Quebec in 1989.
Albert said despite a ranking of 4 out of 5 on the solar-storm scale, it is difficult to predict the effects it will have here on Earth.
— With files from the Associated Press and The Canadian Press
