Sun explodes with activity with a northern lights display possible over Ireland in the next 48 hours
On May 22nd, sunspot AR2824 unleashed a sequence of solar flares unlike anything we've seen in years. In only 24 hours, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded 10 C-flares and 2 M-flares which can be seen in the below video:
The rapid fire explosions hurled multiple overlapping CMEs into space. According to NOAA models, a combined CME will hit Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of May 25th, potentially sparking G2-class geomagnetic storms on May 26th.
The below image shows the sun which is the center dot marked in Yellow with Earth the green dot. The waves in the circle disc are the CMEs heading towards earth which is from the NOAA space weather model. It shows the CME hitting on the 25th of May so around Tuesday evening would be perfect timing for Ireland as that would then mean that activity would peak overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning which would give us a better chance of seen the Aurora. With multiple flare activity over the last 24 hours there is a chance activity could continue into Wednesday night the 26 of May.
As mentioned back in April Donegal Weather Channel talked about the sun starting to wake up again and with us heading out of solar minimum we should expect more activity from our star over the next few months and years with solar maximin expected to peak between the end of 2024 and 2026. This means that as we head towards that period we will start to see more Northern lights displays with a high chance of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) been sent towards earth it also is when we expect the Sun to be covered in more sunspot which are one of the biggest factors in the solar forecast.
The latest forecast for Tuesday night is for clear spells across the northern half of Ireland so this will increase your chances of seen the northern lights if the CME hits at a good time. There mat be a little cloud in parts of Ulster.
Wednesday Night
Wednesday night is looking cloudy across Munster, South Leinster and south Connacht with the best of any clear weather across north Connacht, Ulster and much of Leinster away from the southern half of the provenance.
LATEST NEWS
