G3 geomagnetic storm

Thursday, 4 November 2021 20:26 UTC

G3 geomagnetic storm

What a show! The M1.7 coronal mass ejection arrived ahead of schedule yesterday (3 November) around 19:30 UTC. That is faster than pretty much every forecast that was out there! She must have had a clear run trough space as the cloud impacted our planet with an average speed of about 700km/s.

The Bz component of the interplanetary magnetic field dipped quickly down to as low as -15nT during the impact which quickly sparked moderate G2 geomagnetic storm conditions making aurora visible all over Sweden, Scotland and even The Netherlands to just name a couple of places.

The Bz did turn mostly northward around midnight UTC, but later in the night and morning the Bz really dipped southward for a couple of hours going as low as -18nT. This combined with the high solar wind speed caused strong G3 geomagnetic storm conditions (the second G3 storm of this Solar Cycle) and sparked truly amazing aurora at many locations in Canada and the northern USA. Our friends down under in New Zealand also got a great show!

The Bz has rotated firmly northward now which is really hampering further storm conditions. The show is over... for now... as there might be a new interesting sunspot region just behind the east limb!

Below we have a couple of tweets made by people all over the world, showing how they witnessed this amazing solar storm! Enjoy!

Header image: Mark Duffy

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