It missed us by 9 days

I took my girlfriend Alice to see the Northern lights but she didn’t seem interested, so I asked, “Does the Aurora Bore you Alice?”

"Is the aurora borealis heavy?" "No, it's pretty light." That's a dad joke that even dads groan at.

2 years later, we had a major solar storm on 11/05/2024 with auroras almost worldwide. They are more frequent and getting slightly stronger

seeing this in 2024 is crazy

The thing that alarms me, is when the Carrington event happened, there was very little electrical infrastructure. Mainly telegraph stuff. There were reports of telegraph wires and offices catching fire. Fast forward to today, and there is electrical wires in every home, every business, every building. Never mind the power going out, think of the millions upon millions of structure fires as the wiring in the walls catches fire.

Man, the way she is so passionate and her eyes light up when talking about this. I want more friends like her

Skip forward two years and we just had one of the peak solar storm. Saw the northern lights here in mid UK! Absolutely amazing sights!

Anyone here for the current G5 storm?

At this point I’m like: “I just want to finish this year in one piece.” Edit: Thx for all the likes and responses folks, much love and support to everybody! We’ll make it through together.=)

I was living in Quebec in 1989 when the electricity went out. When the electric company said it was due to "solar flares" we all collectively rolled our eyes, thinking: "sure, it was the sun's fault that you can't run an electric company". Fortunately it was in the summer and only lasted for half a day. But ten years later a freak January storm brought down power lines all over Quebec and some cities had no electricity for 3-4 weeks. Having millions of people without heat and power in the middle of Canadian winter was no joke. Thankfully there were very few deaths, as electric companies all over North America sent repair crews to help us. But if all of North America's electric grid went down one winter due to a solar flare, I shudder to think how bad it would be.

So sad to hear about Diana’s Health , i hope she recovers soon. Defiantly my favourite Science based YouTuber by a mile.

Not many science youtubers give out explanation in a very understandable and relatable way. The examples, the pacing, her choice of words, all lead to easier understanding for us the science plebs. Here, have a sub!

Imagine hanging out with a friend at a parking lot and they just start giving you mind-blowing science facts explained in a way very easy to understand. I want a friend like that. :(

I was traveling an hour south of Salem, Oregon on I-5 at 10 pm in the spring of 1982. I kept seeing green and pink lights in my rear view mirror, and when it hit me what I had been seeing, I pulled off the road and got out of the car. All around me, the sky was filled with swirling, dancing waves of pink and green light. I felt elated, as if I were slightly high, and for a few minutes I was enveloped in the magic of the moment. But I had to two more hours of driving before arriving home, and would be missed, so I reluctantly got back on my way, grateful for the opportunity to not only see, but experience the northern lights. Haven't seen them since, but will never forget the feeling.

YouTube just recommended this to me shortly after the 2024 CME event and I was like, oh wow Physics Girl is back! That's so great! Then I saw that this was actually posted two years ago, and it makes sense why she was only talking about seeing the aurora in Alaska.

We saw an aurora corona event when we visited Sweden this last winter and it honestly blew me off my feet. It was probably one of the coolest things I've seen in my life. If it's gonna be even stronger in three years or so...I may need to find my way up north again!

I like how passionate she is about what she is talking about. "And then we could lose our electricity 🤩, and it could take us 10 years to repair it 🥰, and your computers would get fried! 😇"

I am sooooooo excited that you said there was electrical disruption in 1989! Back then I lived in a very small country town near Wagga Wagga, in Australia. One night in 1989 I was outside sitting on our front step when I looked up at the stars and saw red colour in the sky. The first and only time I've seen those lights! Only a few years ago I was telling my hairdresser about the light, but she did not believe it was red, that it couldn't be the Aurora and had to be something else. As I was around 20yrs when I saw it I knew what I'd seen.

Ohhh, how I miss the amazement in your face while teaching us. It gets me more excited. 💚💚 I saw the short and went straight to this. Such amazing content and can't wait for you to recover and rejoin the world with your lessons. Miss you Physics Girl!

Current solar physics intern here studying CMEs! I'm actually going to school for space weather as well! I have to say, great video, and I'm very glad you made it! This was really factual and better than 99% of the videos I see on YouTube on solar flares and CMEs. 7:32 is such a great idea of what the aurora is "doing," and something I have used to explain the processes in the magnetosphere and energy transfer to newcomers in the field. One criticism, G1 is really nothing for power grids, and unless you're a satellite operator you probably don't need to worry. Even G5 is not a big deal, we've hit G5 without major power grid issues before... but the problem is that after G5 there's no way to "categorize" solar storms based on KPI alone, you would have to look at other measurements like DST, AE, etc. It's like an F5 tornado - you don't know the difference between a strong F5 and a weak F5 just by saying, "it's an F5." The 1989 storm is a great example of how GICs (ground-induced currents) can cause transformers to become overloaded, burning them out if they're "wet" transformers (older transformers that have water contaminated in the oil, creating boiling water bubbles that shred paper insulation between coils, sparking fires).