SACRAMENTO, Calif. — From the Bay Area to Tahoe and Lincoln to Modesto, people living across Northern California were left mesmerized Friday night by the rare sight of the Northern Lights in the sky above the golden state.
The Northern Lights-- known officially as the Aurora Borealis-- swooped down into the United States, much further south than usual, amid a powerful solar storm.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said extreme geomagnetic storm conditions continued Saturday, and there were preliminary reports of power grid irregularities, degradation of high-frequency communications and global positioning systems.
But the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that as of midday Saturday morning, no FEMA region had reported any significant impact from the storms.
Check out some photos sent in from viewers across Northern California:
Northern Californians mesmerized by rare appearance of northern lights
NOAA predicted that strong flares will continue through at least Sunday, and a spokeswoman said in an email that the agency's Space Weather Prediction Center had prepared well for the storm.
ABC10 meteorologists predict that some people living in Northern California will be able to see the Northern Lights again once things get dark Saturday night.
Meteorologists say darkness, along with being as far north as possible, is key for seeing the lights.
The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma. Each eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection, can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
The flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that’s 16 times the diameter of Earth, NOAA said. It is all part of the solar activity ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.
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