aurora alert

there's a high chance to witness aurora borealis at many locations from the 4-5 June thanks to an incoming cannibal CME

Dear word explorer,

Older subscribers might remember a post I made back in May 2024 alerting people to a cannibal CME approaching the Earth, and that evening we had the most extraordinary northern lights, which were observed across the globe at unexpected latitudes.

Cannibal CME

For newer readers, a CME is a Coronal Mass Ejection — the magnetised plasma that sometimes accompanies a solar flare. These energies are blasted in whatever direction the sunspot is facing at that time and are carried by the solar winds, so the Earth isn’t always in their path.

Today it is.

Sunspot 4455 pulsed a series of flares yesterday at various times.

This sunspot is an unusual anti-Hale variety, which means it has a volatile reversed-polarity magnetic field. This graph from SpaceWeather.com shows yesterday’s burst.

A Cannibal CME forms when fast-moving CMEs overtake slower CMEs in front of them, so the CMEs merge and arrive with extra punch. NOAA Space Weather Predictor has a handy animated image to demonstrate the effect.

NOAA’s most recent prediction is:

‘The current forecast calls for combined CME arrival around mid-afternoon EDT of June 4, with up to G3 levels possible afterwards. CME passage would likely continue into the evening and possibly overnight hours of June 5.’

Your ability to see this depends upon your location, and cloud cover. At the moment the West of Ireland is experiencing wild, wet, and windy conditions, so we’ll be dependent upon the whims of our eccentric weather for gaps in the cloud cover.

Spaceweather.com is always a good channel to watch if you want to keep updated on this situation. Sunspot 4455 may not be finished flaring, so this could go on for a while yet.

If you can, watch the skies tonight!

‘Aurora Borealis’ by Frederic Edwin Church, 1865.