Photos: Solar flare makes aurora borealis visible across the globe
Rashad Simmons
·1-min read
A massive solar storm hit the United States and the rest of the globe Friday evening, becoming the biggest in decades.
The intensity of the solar storm painted the night skies in different colors — such as pinks, purples, and greens.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported late Friday that the solar storm would occur over a few hours and days, causing a flare of lights to bloom across the Earth.
“We anticipate that we’re going to get one shock after another, so we’re really buckling down here,” Brent Gordon, chief of the Space Weather Services branch of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said.
The rare solar storm can be seen in photos, capturing the night sky with hues of colors.
CALIFORNIA, USA – MAY 11: Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) illuminate the sky of San Francisco North Bay as seen from China Camp Beach in San Rafael, California, United States on May 11, 2024. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
CALIFORNIA, USA – MAY 11: Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) illuminate the sky of San Francisco North Bay as seen from China Camp Beach in San Rafael, California, United States on May 11, 2024. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
11 May 2024, Kochel: Northern lights sparkle in the night sky over Lake Kochel in Bavaria. Photo: Matthias Balk/dpa (Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)
MOUNT MITCHELL, UNITED STATES – MAY 10: Unusual sun activity created a G5 Geostorm on Earth sparks northern lights (Aurora Borealis) in Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, United States on May 10, 2024. (Photo by Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images)
MOUNT MITCHELL, UNITED STATES – MAY 10: Unusual sun activity created a G5 Geostorm on Earth sparks northern lights (Aurora Borealis) in Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, United States on May 10, 2024. (Photo by Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Typhoon Gaemi passed through Taiwan overnight and was headed towards eastern China on Thursday, leaving two dead as heavy rains and strong gusts continued to lash the island in its wake. Taiwan is accustomed to frequent tropical storms from July to October, but experts say climate change has increased their intensity, leading to heavy rains, flash floods and strong gusts.
This southern Mississippi town's expansive wood pellet plant was so close to Shelia Mae Dobbins' home that she sometimes heard company loudspeakers. Dobbins feels her life — and health — were better before 2016, when United Kingdom energy giant Drax opened a facility able to compress 450,000 tons of wood chips annually in the majority Black town of Gloster, Mississippi.
Authorities evacuated nearly 300,000 people and suspended public transport across eastern China on Friday, as Typhoon Gaemi brought torrential rains already responsible for five deaths in nearby Taiwan.- Heavy rains -
Chinese authorities warned Typhoon Gaemi was bringing with it torrential rains that could cause flooding.
Manila street vendor Zenaida Cuerda said Thursday she is "back to zero" after floodwaters washed away the food she sells for a living and swept through her house.We're now back to zero.
Humanity is suffering from an "extreme heat epidemic," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Thursday, calling for action to limit the impacts of heat waves intensified by climate change."The good news is that we can save lives and we can limit its impact," Guterres said Thursday.
A powerful typhoon made landfall in northeastern Taiwan early on Thursday, killing at least two people and injuring hundreds of others as authorities closed financial markets, schools and offices.
An exceptionally restless female Mexican gray wolf nicknamed Asha will be held in captivity with a potential mate through another breeding season in hopes of aiding the recovery of the species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday. Asha captivated the public imagination after she was found wandering far beyond the boundaries established along the Arizona-New Mexico border for managing the rarest subspecies of gray wolf in North America. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Aislinn Maestas said the wolf, known to wildlife biologists as F2754, has shown signs of bonding and breeding activity with a captive-born male, though so far without producing pups.
For months the world endured droughts, heat waves, floods and cyclones as one of the strongest El Niño events on record brought chaos to global weather systems.
Typhoon Gaemi swept towards southern China on Thursday after killing at least two people in Taiwan, with nine sailors missing after their cargo ship sank in stormy weather.Relentless rain fuelled by Gaemi, which did not pass through the Philippines, killed at least 20 people over the past two weeks in Manila and its surrounding provinces, authorities said Thursday.
There is no indication that a big cargo of industrial fuel oil stored in a tanker that sank in stormy weather in Manila Bay has started to leak, the Philippine coast guard said Friday, and plans are being firmed up to try to siphon off the highly toxic shipment to prevent a major spill that could reach the bustling capital. The tanker Terra Nova had left Bataan province en route to the central province of Iloilo with about 1.4 million liters (370,000 gallons) of industrial fuel oil stored in watertight tanks when it got lashed by huge waves and took on water. The crew struggled to steer the tanker back to port but it eventually sank shortly after midnight Thursday.