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November 11, 2025

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Powerful Solar Storm Could Trigger Far-Reaching Auroras across U.S.

The sun just spat out several coronal mass ejections that could trigger a serious solar storm on Wednesday

By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee Billings

A small group of people are visible as silhouettes and by the light of the smartphones they are holding. The background is a night sky streaked by green and red aurora.

Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

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A powerful solar storm could spark auroras as far south as northern California and Alabama on Wednesday, thanks to a particularly rambunctious area on the sun dubbed active region 4274 (AR4274). In recent days the region has unleashed multiple outbursts, including a solar flare that ranks as one of the most powerful of the current solar cycle.

That dramatic flash of light was followed by a coronal mass ejection, or CME, an event in which the sun propels a giant cloud of magnetized plasma into space. If Earth is in the firing line of a CME, it can wreak havoc on our planet in a range of phenomena referred to as space weather. AR4274 is aligned such that its material is heading toward Earth—at some 3.3 million miles per hour, no less. Along the way, it could catch up and join forces with two previous, slower CMEs that occurred on Sunday and Monday.

In response to the outbursts, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G4 geomagnetic storm watch for Wednesday—the fourth such alert of the current solar cycle. The scale behind this system runs from one to five, with a G4 watch deemed “severe.” An event of this magnitude can cause potential interference to power grids, spacecraft operations, satellite navigation and radio communications.

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These effects mean that, like terrestrial weather prediction, space weather prediction has been deemed a mission-critical activity that has continued even during the federal government shutdown.

Unfortunately for aurora watchers, the peak of activity is expected to occur during North America’s daylit hours, when any auroral activity will be invisible.

Geomagnetic turmoil is expected to continue into Thursday at a G3, or strong, level, which can trigger auroras as far south as Illinois and Oregon.

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Meghan Bartels is a science journalist based in New York City. She was previously a senior reporter at Scientific American. Before that she spent more than four years as a writer and editor at Space.com, as well as nearly a year as a science reporter at Newsweek, where she focused on space and Earth science. Her writing has also appeared in Audubon, Nautilus, Astronomy and Smithsonian, among other publications. She attended Georgetown University and earned a master’s degree in journalism at New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.

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