Merging solar storms could make Northern Lights visible as far south as Alabama

(WDBJ/Gray News) – Part of the United States could see the Northern Lights on Friday.

A severe storm could trigger colorful auroras as far south as Alabama.

The Space Weather Prediction Center says at least five coronal mass ejections have been directed toward Earth.

These explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun’s corona create the storm.

The coronal mass ejections were observed heading toward Earth and are expected to combine and slam into the Earth’s atmosphere sometime Friday.

NASA Ambassador Mike Overacker snapped a photo of the large cluster sunspots Thursday and said this could be the biggest grouping since the 1800s.

For perspective, the sunspot grouping is the diameter of 15 earths. The sun itself could hold 1.3 million Earths inside of it.

“Watches at this level are very rare,” the NOAA Watch states.

If strong enough, the storms could impact infrastructure, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations.

Only three severe geomagnetic storms have been observed during this solar cycle which began in December 2019.

The last severe geomagnetic storm watch was March 23, 2024, which created an incredible viewing of the northern lights.

The last extreme storm watch was the Halloween storms in October 2003 which resulted in power outages in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.

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