I wanted to touch on real quick. Go ahead, but we just use seconds oh, okay. The army kept sending him there knowing this was going on. The violence and stuff and they kept sandi him back south korea so i just wanted Jones Outbreak will continue to stay in touch with you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. And thank you all so much for joining us. Cnns Special Coverage of that solar storm starts right now on Newsnight Historic Event is underway tonight as a dazzling display of solar flares are right now painting the sky. Welcome to a Special Edition of newsnight. Ive abby phillip in new york alongside bill. Were and it is a first in nearly two decades, a warning from the government would and there, whether watchers, the solar storm that is now rated a g5 or extreme as of right now on the east coast is underway. This is a blast of Solar Energy Ricocheting across the United States. A rare moment where you can look up and see the Northern Lights visible from coast to coast. Normally, you gotta go to northern alaska, iceland, but now you can see them as far south as alabama. Tonights, but it does have some potentially farreaching disruptions to our infrastructure and our way of life. Abby what you can see in places as the auroras of dipping into palettes and splashes of blue and green, their purple haze sort of on a black canvas. What you dont see, the real threat to the things that let us make phone calls or get directions from slamming into each other or letting each other connect for National Security or shipping our Supply Chains let us beam this programming right into your living room. So over the next two hours, cnn will tell you everything you need to know as only cnn can we have a full roster of experts, weather forecasters, space meteorologists, The Science Guy, astrophysicists, aurora hunters, and all the best glimpses from cnn affiliates Around The World. And of course from you, weve also got bill where we are here for the entire two hours. But lets get started with cnns chad myers and the Weather Center with more on what this storm is exactly. What we can expect chad, this is a little bit of a different assignment for you than usual. If youre up in space instead of giving us the weather. So what should we know . When were looking at the sun about four or five days ago, we noticed the sunspot getting very, very active and it is 17 now 17 times the size of the diameter of the earth. So thats how big this thing is. And it started to get active and then all of a sudden, we got a Coronal Mass Ejection in ejection of plasma that came right toward the earth. How do we know that it came toward the earth . Because if it went this way, itd be well off to our west. But we see a halo, of plasma and those that like a puff of smoke getting blown at you and you want to get out of the way, would you see it all around you, you know, its headed in your direction so thats how we know that this is headed toward earth. And now there are more than one of these cmes Coronal Mass Ejections headed toward earth. In fact, probably even six more things have calmed down just a little bit. I was really looking at europe about an hour ago and things were purple everywhere. But another ejection will hit the earth likely around midnight tonight. So if youre not seeing what you thought you were going to see, just wait an hour or two, couple of things going on right now, were still watching this. Were watching for the polarity or the northsouth axis of this Coronal Mass Ejection, which by the way is moving at 1. 7 million miles per hour. Keep that in mind when youre thinking about, wow, this is really headed our direction, but were watching this Little Red Dot here. This is the polarity of the Coronal Mass Ejection when its below the line, thats when we really get the coronas to light up. For awhile. Today, it was above and things calm down. But now that were going back down into polarities coming from the south, those Northern Lights are going to get busy and very, very pretty chat. I think a lot of folks dont realize there is a Rating System for solar storms. The way there is for tornadoes, you were worried about f3, f4, a five tornadoes last week. Now, this is a g5 storm. Explain this and put it in context. In recent history were five of five, and we talked about that even with the risk of Severe Weather, theres a level three of five risk or four or five, and weve had some fours this week and even a five for the high risk of Severe Weather while we have five of five theyve now for this severe storm and the auroras are going to be farther to the south, but Power Outages are likely anything thats long and metal will begin to gather this plasma thats out there and start to even pipelines will begin to dont touch them kind of thing. We have lots of amperage in pipelines if there theyre exposed to the air, satellite disruptions, i think are probably likely, without a doubt, the plasma, the power coming from the sun is more powerful than the power coming from the satellite itself. Heres a Little Something though that disturbs me just a second. We are supposed to be today down here in this active category. Thats not where we are. We are way up here, then the forecast for tomorrow was to be where we are right now. What happens tomorrow doesnt even go hired as do we get to the nine, do we get to that nine k index still going to be a g5 but if youre all the way down to the south, you are going to see this. You have cloud cover today dont worry about it because this is not like an eclipse. This is a multi day event wow, if for those of us who want to see a Little Something here in new york that might be good news. Weve got a cloudy day here. So for those of you waiting, weve got a whole weekend ahead, chad. Thanks very much. Well check in with you shortly. Again, this extreme five out of five, as you heard chad say geomagnetic storm, it is the strongest and more than 20 years joining us now is sean dahl. Hes the Senior Forecaster at noahs Space Weather Prediction Center shawn this storm is at the highest level of the scale that we have to measure these things. So based on what youve seen so far of the activity in the skies or other metrics that you might have that im sure are much more sophisticated what do you rate this storm as in terms of its intensity high, but thanks for having and so im glad to share information with all your viewers this here is one of quite notable proportions. We havent seen this level of activity since 2003 with the famous Halloween Storms we last hit this type of category. And when we get to these g5 levels is chad so explained quite well. You can have a g5 level thats just at my head and you can have a g5 that several stories up over my head. We are not at that super nasty g5 level. These are low g5 extreme storms, still quite significant and thats why we do hit the Space Weather Prediction Center in colorado is to inform all the operators of our technologies that chad talked about. So they can take the proper measures to make sure things still function as much as possible. Sean, i dont know if if youre a baseball fan, abeer baseball famine, use that metaphor. Ill take your word for we know that the odds of getting hit in the nose with a foul ball, sitting at a game or pretty, pretty rare. But if you do, its going to hurt a lot and it feels like the sun is this power hit are on steroids, just blasting energy out into the galaxy into our milky way stadium. And whether or not it hits our seat section, right now is what were paying attention to. How are you able to predict with precision where itll have the most effect . We know which grids might be the most vulnerable, which side of the earth, like how precise can you get . Its very difficult to get Precision Forecasting for something thats global in nature some areas of the world may have more of an effect than other areas, even at similar intensities just because of the variances in earths protective magnetic barrier that magnetosphere, which is whats connecting with the sun and by the way, with this piece that flung out towards earth is giant magnetic connection which can be explained very well what the direction of them. So yes, its very difficult to forecast Space Weather storms. I mean, were dealing with something 93 million miles away, an extraordinarily difficult to time these. We did a great job knowing that these were getting i can earth. But our timing was off a bit and thats no surprise for that vast amount of distance. Yeah. One of the things weve been Hearing Everybody talk about is how active the sun has been in this part of the cycle how do we know when its going to be really, really bad . I mean, this tie you said its up to your head but how do we know when two or three story level that you just described we might be talking about a g5 that is completely different from the one that were talking about today. Abby well, seven, thats correct. We dont really know until the stormy merges, so we can forecast and see them emerged from the sun. But then we have to wait. We have to wait until it gets only a million miles from earth. Thats where our first small fleet of satellites are. That detect the changes. In what we call solar wind, which chad was alluding to what the Magnetic Field. Then we have very little warning time at that point, but we have to wait until n. So once we sought arrived in, arrived like the baseball bill described hitting him a face, it struck with force and it immediately started to light up because it was the favorable direction that opposite earth. And it connected and we rapidly rose all the way up through g54. And then we hit g5 here later today. And then once again, i think afterwards as well. So yes, it works that way and its not a cycle in 11 years cycle on average. And right now, we are the year where we expect the peak to be of this Solar Maximum for solar cycle 25 is this year or early next year. But sorry, it doesnt shut off right away. It takes a little while. 2025 and 2026 will still be at risk for these types of storms thats really, really interesting. Sean doll, youve got a really interesting job. I ended up just a little bit. Well check in with you again. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, sean. Lot of people dont know that were Space Weatherman. Youre just not one right . There. Are these extraordinary images coming in through social media . From Around The World as people try to get their first glimpse in many cases of the Northern Lights, even if theyre not that far north, but there are potential hazards associated with this, not to you physically, but our way of life, power grid communication, cnn, Kristin Fisher joins us now with more on that. Kristen thanks for being here. What are the biggest concerns that were worried about tonight . Yeah. So as you said, built the biggest concerns dont have anything to do with threats to our actual human bodies, right . I mean, the earths Magnetosphere Acts is kind of an iron dome of sorts you know, kind of deflecting all of those a highly Charged Particles coming from the sun. The biggest dangers have to do with threats to the power grid or threats to the satellites that contribute so much to our daily lives. And so the biggest threat probably that folks have been saying specifically with this solar storm is with the power grid because when all of those highly Charged Particles interact with our magnetosphere and the earths magnetosphere, what it does is it can cause surges in voltage. And so the fix for it is kind of like how you would imagine a Surge Protector to work the power operators, the Critical Infrastructure operators have been notified about this. There are theoretically fixes in place, Surge Protections in place to keep this from really impacting us too much. But the last time in 2003 when there was a really big storm, sweden face some pretty big Power Outages voted south africa. So thats certainly something to watch for. And then the other big thing is of course, the threat to satellites, disturbances to satellites, particularly in lowearth orbit bill and the one good thing though, is they do not anticipate a big disturbance to our cell phones because even if theres an issue with the satellite connectivity, you can still connect with Cell Phone Towers here on earth and then things like atms. Thats not expected to be impacted either unless theres a secondary impact with a Power Outage Associated to that specific atm machine. So kristen, normally you are covering whats happening as people are going up into space or whats happening in space, whats going on with nasa right now, you talked about the satellites are thousands of them up there, but theyre also astronauts up there right now to how are they preparing for this . How are they dealing with it as its now underway . Yes. So you see on your screen right there theyre seven astronauts. Theres nasa astronauts and russian cosmonauts up at the International Space station and while they do get some protection from the earths atmosphere, its certainly not as much as we get here on earth. And so there are scenarios where are these astronauts they trained for this . They go into certain parts of the International Space station that are more protected. Nasa describes it as having more mass where they can kind of go to and theyre not right by a window, they get a bit more protection in from this really harmful radiation particles. But this time nasa says theyre not going to take any precautionary measures. Theyve just put out a statement. I want to read it to you, abby. It says nasa completed a thorough analysis of recent Space Weather Activity and determined it posed no threat to the crew aboard the International Space station and no additional precautionary measures are needed. So some good news there. But guys, if you all have ever seen the show for all mankind, you may remember theres a scene where a Big Solar Storm hits the astronauts up in a futuristic lunar base and they all have to run it to take cover that would happen if nasa is Artemis Program goes through, they build a lunar base and then a Big Solar Storm like this comes because the moon doesnt have an atmosphere to protect astronauts on a lunar base there, like the iss astronauts do right now yet another one of the hazards we have to think about how an ising other planets. One more thing to think about that line, kristen thank you so much for that one. Keep an eye on what things happened tonight and in the coming hours as this happens yeah. I want to bring it out. Cnns paula newton, she is in don robin on tarriela. Thats about 15 miles from the Canadian Capital of ottawa paula, youre further north of here what are you seeing now that youre a little bit a ways from the Light Pollution in the city yeah. And thats what i can control for right. Abby control for the fact that i get away from the city where at least here, where if we see it, weve got a good eye on it and bury our Photo Journalist has an excellent lens, so were at the ready. The issue is though i have to break it to you guys in canada, the Northern Lights, right . Im not going to say its common, but look, we do see it you know, whether youre at 60 degrees, 58, 62 cuts a swath through most of canada. And so we are kind of used to seeing it even when the solar storm isnt that strong. So we controlled for the Light Pollution the problem here is still cloud. We are told that in western canada, in fact, there should be less cloud cover tonight. Im still hopeful right where i am right now that we should have a gorgeous display interesting here. Normally we get that green color here. Its actually more of a milky green, so those gorgeous colors, youve seen from england, essentially actually, usually you dont see here. But we are ready and waiting in a lot of people will be out on the porches the way i am right now. I would on their front and back porches and people waking other people up usually, it would be around midnight 1 00 a. M. Eastern. Thats what theyre telling us. This is the most likely time as i said, if you talk to many people in canada, especially outdoorsy people, theyll say that they have seen it, you know, a handful of times in their lives, sometimes many more times in that very good yeah. The old hat to canadians, but folks and maybe alabama could get a glimpse of this thing if things go well, paula, thank you so much. I will check back later more on our Special Coverage a