To our viewers here in the United States and all Around The World. Im michael holmes. Appreciate your company and well welcome to this Special Edition of cnn newsroom. We begin this hour with the powerful Geomagnetic Storm happening right now. All Around The World are storm classified as extreme level five out of five phenomenon that last half happened more than 20 years ago. And its causing the northern and Southern Lights to dazzle many places that rarely, if ever, see them, have a look at the scene here in atlanta or in the southern us a short time ago, parts of the midwest and even Northern California have seen chances of seeing the aurora, the skies over the uk and ireland, lighting up in vivid colors earlier on friday night. And there continues to be a high likelihood of aurora over parts of europe and asia meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere, the Aurora Australis was spotted over New Zealanders well as argentina it all started when the sun erupted with a series of solar flares. And whats known as coronal mass objections. And when those particles reach earths Magnetic Field and atmosphere, it creates the spectacular light shows that many of us are witnessing. The lights are expected to peak in the coming hours, although the storm will likely continue through the weekend the Biden Administration says it is closely tracking the possible impacts of the solar storm as it could disrupt communications satellites, and Power Station electrical utilities in the and canada are making preparations just in case cnns chad myers has more now on the historic solar storms and where you might see those auroras right . So everybody wants to know whether its going to be visible, where i am, right . It will be visible across most of North America, maybe not all the way down to the gulf coast, but itll be close. And its not a oneday event. So even if you have cloud cover for tonight, you will still be able to see it tomorrow because theres more than one Coronal Mass Ejection on the way. So what is it . Well, its just a ball of plasma thats being shot at the earth. These things happen all the time but rarely do we have them that goes straight at the earth. Think about how big 3dimension could we go that way . Could go to the back, could depends on where the sunspot is. Well, we know this is coming toward the earth because of what we call the halo effect. When you see the Cloud Mass Kind of come out of this. This is the sun right here. This is the sun being blocked by a disk but when you see the Coronal Mass Ejection come this way, its like looking at Somebody Blowing Smoke Ring at you, you know, its coming and you know, its on its way thats the same idea, same kind of smoke ring that were seeing. So yes, we have more than one still coming. So overnight, a big ones still landing on the earths atmosphere. And we are still seeing think that really bright, Colorful Cloud All The Way around the globe. Typically, you place youre not seeing it is where its sunny, where the sun is already come up and you cant see it, but it was very, very spectacular somewhere around i would say maybe one z, one zulu time, greenwich mean time somewhere around 9 00, not quite 9 00 on the east coast of the us. But it was still light. We couldnt see it in North America but another one and then another one and another one. This is still going to be going for quite some time this is what the solar wind looks like i want you to think of it like a, like a the seismograph in when youre looking at california and you see the earth shake. Well, the sun wasnt shaking at all. The solar wind was doing just fine, being nice and flat but then all of a sudden around two, 30 or two 40 this afternoon, the earth began to shake, literally. And so did the solar wind. And it came in very, very quickly, get this number around your brain. 1. 6 million miles per hour. Thats how fast this solar wind is coming. Aurora seen farther south with a g5 big number. This is five out of five, this is as big as we get there are still levels of five but g5, were already up their Power Outages are likely and also satellite disruptions are also likely. So yes, its certainly possible where the red coronas and then the most common are the green. This is what we see all the time across as parts of canada, but the less common are the purples and the reds. We are seeing a lot of them tonight now, thanks to chad majdi. Now canada, no stranger to the potential disruptions and dangerous from Geomagnetic Storms like this. Cnns paula newton is live for us, this soundly a kannada. Thats just outside the Canadian Capital of auto and good to see you, my friend, you canadians are used for the Northern Lights. How has it been there . What were the concerns and whats play it out . You know, its interesting with chad said we are used to seeing them fairly regularly here. And you doesnt have to be a severe solar storm for canadians to see them, especially in places where you dont have the light pollution. But as he just said, you would normally see it in green. Some of the colic colors all over North America have been incredibly spectacular not so much here in canada though this time, about ten miles from us, they had some beautiful purples and pinks in the sky, but unfortunately we have some cloud cover here is still, so were going to be a little bit more patient and see if it comes out. The issue here, michael, is that in 1989 and they had a blackout in cabac that is a canadian province actually, just over the river behind me. And that was a lot of chaos that happened in 1989. But whats fascinating here is that they just didnt have the sensors, the monitors, the satellite certainly technology that they have now than they had in 1989. So they are better prepared, theyre better prepared and all the hydro grids all across canada and the United States, they do not believe that that would occur this time around for various reasons in terms of the Infrastructure Backups they have in place and new technology. Having said that, as chad clearly explain, this is a very strong solar storms. So theyre thinking a bit out of the box here. Im wondering, okay, what could go wrong and they were trying to foresee all the possibilities so far so good midnight just. After midnight where i am here, eastern time apparently theyre supposed to be some really strong some solar Storm Activity coming in the next hour or two in this location in canada will see if the clouds cleared up. But right now, it is just a lot to look at. In the sky on the ground, everything seems normal for now. Michael all right. Good. Deny some lovely images. Weve been watching as you been speaking, pool and newton there in auto, appreciate it. Good to see you all right. Lets talk more about this and break it all down with sean doll. Hes the senior forecast or at no Space Weather Prediction Center busy night for you . This was ranked of four on a scale of one to five. Now it is a gif file if the top number, what makes it a five and shubi be more worried than we were when it was four thanks for having us glad to be here and sharing this information with your Viewing Audience yeah, this is, we were anticipating a g54 but that was still significant at severe levels. Why . Because we havent issued a G4 Storm Watch since 2005. So its been a long time. Thats because we had a pretty high level of confidence. These were going to be earthdirected Coronal Mass Ejections. Its chad described that were going to reach earth well, we didnt know for sure is the timing. Were trying to forecast something from 93 million miles away, very difficult to get that down to the hour or so please take those timings with some caution. But we did get a cme arrival. We dont know if it was several hitting together because some were moving faster than others but in either case, we did it have a chance for the g5 but we do not issue watches for g5 because theres too much unknowns. And sure as heck, we did meet the g5 at least twice now, yeah. I when we go back the most disruptive solar storm ever recorded, correct me if im wrong, that was 18, 59 and it was known as the Carrington Event how did that differ to this well call it this way. Everythings correct that you said that Carrington Event, the level of activity right now, what were experiencing, lets call it to my head level, that carrington a level event went another three stories up over my head. Thats the difference. You can have from one g5 to another. Were on the low end of the g5 and thats still been disruptive. Weve been hearing about some impacts and effects to include our neighbors up north that you were just talking with . The transmission operation, operators are working very hard to mitigate any problems because theyre having irregularities on their Voltage Systems up there. Weve heard reports of this already, but its things that theyre able to manage, but its a very busy night for them. And here in the United States, when we talk about impacts, i know there were a lot of worstCase Scenario but one of the ones that struck me was if there could be a threat to satellites and how they operate and how they all but, and theres a lot of them up there how would that work for this type of storm . It really messes up the outer atmosphere, so especially for low earth orbiting satellites, they start to slow down because the atmosphere spanned expanded. Its heated up. And that slowdown makes gravity win the war and they started to pull back down if the operators dont control them and keep them at the problem upper orbital level. So thats one problem the Satellite Controllers are dealing with another one is that we also have a Solar Radiation Storm going on at the same time that s on our scale. And we hit two at that level earlier on that one through five. And that can cause particles energized particles from the sun to get into. The Interior Electronics and cause anomalous commands to happen. As one example, wow, how long could the impacts carry on the technical ones, but also the aurora which are just so incredible to watch as we said, even as far south as here in georgia and that just doesnt happen now, thats pretty rare as it at two, i just saw the aurora here from our house and Northern Colorado really havent seen in the nine years, i didnt hear yeah, its pretty rare for these events to happen. And but thats why we do what we do. Our job here is to not necessarily report on the aurora, but its certainly some people are interested in. So thats why we talk about it. But were really tailored and making phone calls and contact and all the infrastructure operators. Weather, satellite communications, the gps navigation, by the way, weve had a lot of reports of gps inaccuracies and issues today for certain types of systems because of these storms. And thats what we do here. Its mitigating problems problems talking to customers and users of our information to make sure the operators can avoid as many problems as possible. When you go back and even talking about what happened in 2003 and so on, we become ever more dependent on technology, on and on gadgets, on things like gps. Does that, does that make it more likely that things will be affected by Something Like this . Or we also more knowledgeable and we learn how to mitigate it my goal, its true some technologies were still learning about. This is a test Case Scenario for some of the technologies to see how theyre actually impacted because some things have developed so quickly, we just dont know, we havent had this type of storms since 2003 so were still learning as we go through this. Meanwhile, things weve learned in the past, measures of protections have been done. Youre calling to the north and canada, there was mentioning about nothing experienced for Power Outages in canada. Thats true. Some of the things that have been stalled inhibit the induced currents that happen from these storms on the high voltage Transmission Line there call inhibit theres some of those have been spun up in there being utilized and to deflect in keep the current from building up, which is harmful to transformers. When will you be, when we talk about how long this goes on and so on, when we, you be relieved that we got through it without major mishap we are anticipating still potential issues all the way up into monday at this point because we had yet another one of these Coronal Mass Ejections leave the sun earlier today and potentially another one not too long ago from solar flares that are still taking place. These oftentimes associated with each other, and its all due to the region. The chat described, the gigantic sunspot complex in the Southern Hemisphere of the sun. Were not going to be out of that threat for certain types of storms and all our scales until it rotates two and beyond the whim of the sun. And thats going to still take yet another several days. What what can we people like you actually people who know what theyre talking about, what can we learn from events like this . If we can learn how to message properly and weve done a great job of that so far from everything weve learned in the past, weve broadened our audience, our government here in the United States as well as international partners, even in the United Kingdom and elsewhere Around The World. They are all concerned now because of things you mentioned with our technology and they want to have measures in place to properly mitigate problems, have rules, make sure things are being followed. Here in the United States. These are those executive orders. Theres bills and legislation working groups, all assembled to design to help protect from a major Space Weather Event . Because if we ever experienced Something Like the Carrington Event, which by the way was over ten times stronger than the event that collapsed the power grid in canada in 1989. We were gonna be in some trouble potentially wow, wow so fascinating to talk with you and we appreciate you staying up. Youll night is is far from over rye. I ventured as shown dow, thanks so much youre very welcome, michael. Thank you. Good night. Good to see you all right. Quick break here on the program when we come back a closer, look at the potential impact of this massive solar storm and what it could mean for your cell phone bows Electronic Devices were also relied upon. Well be right back the myth has to be we imagined. It was feed if you didnt know whether you were next, they were both tied up . Yeah. Yeah. I was called in and i saw what turned out to be the big star heist in history. It went from gold medal winning icon to a pariah what really happened with jesse l. Martin . 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