I saw it for the first time in a similarly intense storm last year and it was remarkable. It seems like it might be a stormy night locally but this could be your best viewing chance in a while. They have northern and southern hemispheric projections on that Space Watch website.

edit: Hot damn, it just reached the highest threshold I’ve seen in a year:

ALERT: Geomagnetic K-index of 8, 9-

Threshold Reached: 2025 Jun 01 1346 UTC

Synoptic Period: 1200-1500 UTC

Active Warning: Yes

NOAA Scale: G4 - Severe

NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at

www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation

Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 45 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.

Induced Currents - Possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems may mistakenly trip out key assets from the power grid. Induced pipeline currents intensify.

Spacecraft - Systems may experience surface charging; increased drag on low earth orbit satellites, and tracking and orientation problems may occur.

Navigation - Satellite navigation (GPS) degraded or inoperable for hours.

Radio - HF (high frequency) radio propagation sporadic or blacked out.

Aurora - Aurora may be seen as low as Alabama and northern California.

  • Feinsteins_Ghost [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 days ago

    When I was in my early teens, I was in the very beginning of all my substance abuse issues, I spent three months in an outward bound based setup. Three weeks of that three months were spent cross country skiing through Glacier National Park (I got to take Going To The Sun Road) I was in Glacier National Park, New Years Eve 1995. I had frost nip on my toes, I remember lying on my sled, looking up, and watching the Aurora glimmer while they pulled my boots off and shoved my feet against someone’s warmed body to help warm me up.

    It’s the only time I’ve ever seen it except on video now. I remember laying there and just watching, in amazement.

    I’m jealous of those who get to experience it again. It’s a wonder of the world we inhabit, some folks will live an entire lifetime and never get to experience.

    • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      10 days ago

      It’s the only time I’ve personally seen the atmosphere as a dynamic thing. Even in the high altitude Rockies it’s just a minute difference between gas compositions and pressure levels that I never have to engage with. Sometimes a cloud is neat, sometimes a pilot dies because wind happened, it’s just a static blue thing that’s poisoning me. When I saw the aurora in our most intense solar storm in 20 years, it felt like what I imagine seeing the atmosphere from the edge of space would be like. The magnetosphere was an actual thing I could plainly watch interact with the most violent thing in the solar system. Atmospheric gases were actual lenses filtering the energy of millions of atom bombs with a sense of overwhelming scale like looking up at a mountain. It totally made sense how that’s historically been a religious experience. That’s earth battling a force beyond anything we could harness until now.