Breathtaking northern lights splash across the night skies as far south as Florida

 A powerful burst of energy from the sun is streaming past Earth, disturbing energized particles in the highest levels of the atmosphere and painting stunning aurora borealis displays across the night sky as far south as Texas, Alabama, Georgia and even north Florida.

Several eruptions of energy from the sun, known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are expected to reach Earth’s magnetic field over the next two nights. The Space Weather Prediction Center issued a G4 “severe” geomagnetic storm watch for Tuesday and Wednesday. G4 is the second-strongest level on the five-step scale.

An aurora in Nelson County, Virginia, on Tuesday night. 

Tommy Stafford

What a G4 storm means

Geomagnetic storms happen when the solar wind rushes through Earth’s magnetosphere. Charged particles from the sun interact with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing stunning northern lights, or glowing curtains of green, red and purple light that ripple across the sky.