The latest on the massive solar storm

The Biden administration is monitoring the possibility of impacts from the solar storm this weekend, according to a White House official.

The official said an interagency effort is underway with participation from the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, among others. 

The US Secret Service presidential protection division is also coordinating with the White House and local jurisdictions, US Secret Service communications chief Anthony Guglielmi said.

“This ensures maximum interoperability and is important when visiting remote locations or in instances with extreme environmental events, like solar flares and major storms,” he said.

A series of solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun have the potential to create dazzling auroras that may be seen as far south as Alabama and Northern California as early as Friday and continuing into the weekend, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Increased solar activity causes auroras that dance around Earth’s poles, known as the northern lights, or aurora borealis, and southern lights, or aurora australis. When the energized particles from coronal mass ejections reach Earth’s magnetic field, they interact with gases in the atmosphere to create different-colored light in the sky.

Geomagnetic storms driven by the sun in recent months have caused auroras to be visible in places where they are rarely seen, including as far south as New Mexico, Missouri, North Carolina and California in the United States as well as the southeast of England and other parts of the United Kingdom.

Depending on the location, the auroras may not always be visible overhead, but keep an eye on the horizon, experts say, because they may create a colorful display there as well.

Even if auroras aren’t visible in the sky, experts at the center recommend taking images of the sky with your phone because the images may capture what you can’t see with the naked eye.

To prepare for the incoming geomagnetic storm this week, the US government is advising people to take the same steps they would take in response to an extended power outage.

For example, for a space weather event, the government recommends keeping extra batteries or a hand-powered charger available for small electronic devices.

Officials say you may want to disconnect electric appliances to protect them from power surges and limit your electricity usage during a solar weather event. You may also want to keep your car’s gas tank at least half-full so that you do not need to visit a gas station, which needs electricity to operate the pumps.

Regarding cell phones, many wireless carrier providers already maintain backup power generators and mobile cellular towers that they can deploy in the event of a natural disaster or other major incident.

Redundancy and resiliency are watchwords of all critical infrastructure providers, so even if the power grid did fail, consumers might have to worry more about how to keep their phones charged rather than whether they could stay online.

There is an increased chance of visibility for the northern lights, or aurora borealis, particularly across Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England and Wales due to the solar storm this weekend, the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office says.

There is a chance of visibility even further south, but the Met Office advises using long exposure on camera to capture the lights.  

The Met Office said that they will continue to monitor the conditions of the sun.

A geomagnetic storm caused by solar flare activity could trigger numerous effects for life on Earth this weekend, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This kind of solar activity involves the release of energy from the sun that travels through space and eventually reaches Earth.

When that radiation hits the magnetic sphere surrounding the planet, it causes fluctuations in the ionosphere, a layer of the upper atmosphere. Those changes can directly affect satellites and other spacecraft in orbit, altering their orientation or potentially knocking out their electronics.

Here’s what that could mean:

CNN's Ashley Strickland contributed reporting to this post.

The US government issued its first severe geomagnetic storm watch in nearly 20 years, advising the public of “at least five earth-directed coronal mass ejections” and sunspots that could arrive as early as Friday and continue through the weekend, according to scientists.

A severe geomagnetic storm, or G4, is the second-highest grade in the US government’s classification system.

The Space Weather Prediction Center has been tracking multiple strong flares emitting from a large cluster of sunspots on the solar surface since Wednesday. The cluster is 16 times the diameter of Earth. Radiation from this activity will begin to hit Earth’s magnetic field on Friday and last through the weekend, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

These five coronal mass ejections, or large clouds of ionized gas called plasma, are magnetic fields that erupt from the sun’s outer atmosphere, releasing from the sun in the direction of Earth.

Because the coronal mass ejections carry their own magnetic field, they can overwhelm power lines and induce electrical currents, said Rob Steenburgh, space scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center.

US scientists warn about possible communication outages or interference to GPS systems as at least five coronal mass ejections from the sun head toward Earth Friday and into this weekend.

The Space Weather Prediction Center referred to this as “an unusual event.” There have been three geomagnetic storms since December 2019, but all of them have been considered weak, according to the center.

So far, researchers have observed only three severe geomagnetic storms during the current solar cycle, which began in December 2019, according to the center.

Previously, a G5, or extreme geomagnetic storm, occurred in October 2003, resulting in power outages in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa, according to the center. This current storm has been classified as a G4, the second-highest grade.

Other historical instances of space weather: In 1989, a space weather event led to a massive blackout in Quebec, Canada for more than nine hours after geomagnetic fluctuations damaged transformers and other important equipment.

In October, an extreme geomagnetic storm stronger than the one predicted for this weekend led to power outages in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa, the SWPC said.

The largest known geomagnetic storm in history, known as the Carrington Event of 1859, caused telegraph stations to spark and catch fire.