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Possible aurora visible through central US tonight
This page looks like an accessibility nightmare. The entire warning text is an image. There is no transcription present for screen reader users. I did not expect this from a government website.
It seems that the peak was several hours ago, and I haven't observed any effects from it...
We had intense aurora in Berlin, Germany. Green clouds dancing in the sky levels. Started around 22:10 local time or a bit earlier, and at this point there's only a faint red/green glow remaining.
Do you need long exposure to make it visible with a camera? How does that work in the presence of light pollution?
PJM had some geomagnetic disturbance warnings, but did not progress to the alert stage or grid re-configuation actions. So, no US power grid problems.

    104955 Warning Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning 01.19.2026 14:30 
    PJM-RTO
    A Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning has been issued for
    14:30 on 01.19.2026 through 16:00 on 01.19.2026 .
    A GMD warning of K8 or greater is in effect for this period. 
    End time: 01.19.2026 16:00 
(All times are prevailing Eastern US time)

I've posted on this before, for other warnings. Not going to repeat that.

Years ago I was concerned about this and made a plan with my wife for what to do if she was at work.

But now we have a bunch of kids in different schools and haven't updated our plan.

Does anyone have a plan for what happens if we have a really bad event?

Weirdly, while the site in question is "blaring klaxons!" there are more "cool night lights!" posts than concern.
I'll be going out tonight if this continues into Australian night time hours.

At this strength, I could see the full display including colors with my naked eye in Melbourne, May 11th 2024. This storm is slightly stronger than that event.

Darn Montreal is still too south. Wish I were in Winnipeg.
Hopefully it's clear space weather for Artemis II coming up. I wonder what they do if it's inclement en route?
I had the most intensely coloured lights visible in the west of Ireland. I've seen them a few times before but never like this. Phones were capturing them in video not just long exposures.

Not sure what the best service is to be alerted ahead of time. Apparently it'll be strong here again at 6am according to some of the apps some random people were waving around.

Probably a stupid question, but should I unplug my EV? (UK)
I wonder if we're going to see an aurora over Seattle tonight?
Too much light pollution. You'd have to get well outside of the city. I looked at the weather last night and I think there might have been some trails on Tiger where you would've seen it with headlamp off.

In Seattle you can barely see planets.

We never get aurora in Japan :(
How rare is this?

G4 storms are ~100 per solar cycle (~11 years).

So roughly 9 G4 events/year on average.

Although everyone is interested in visible aurora, the proton flux is also really impressive. It peaked at 37,000 pfu at 1910Z. The highest ever recorded was 43,500 pfu in March 1991.
Up to G-5 possibly. Cell phone visible in dark areas throughout most of CONUS.

It was mentioned that air travel ionizing radiation exposure increases during geomagnetic storms. I'd consider pausing travel for a couple of days to not be a guinea pig because there's not enough data to consider it safe. If anyone absolutely must fly tonight, it'd be interesting if they were to take a high sensitivity dosimeter to see what happens.