7 Solar Flares Mean Northern Lights Over Missouri Friday Night

This solar storm is almost unprecedented. Thanks to 7 incoming coronal mass ejections, it's all but certain that the Northern Lights should be visible over Missouri Friday night and also possibly throughout the weekend.

NOAA's Space Weather forecast has now upgraded what they term a "G4-Severe" solar storm warning. They say in their alert that "Aurora may be seen as low as Alabama and northern California". As Fox 2 St. Louis points out, this puts the Northern Lights not just visible from Missouri, but likely to be overhead if skies remain clear.

There are some alarming aspects of this warning from NOAA as they advise that "Possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems may mistakenly trip out key assets from the power grid. Induced pipeline currents intensify." That could mean trouble for the power grid in some places. They also say that GPS could be inoperable for hours and radio may experience long blackouts. 

I've seen that Missouri was one of the first states impacted by the first incoming CME with some reporting KP index numbers over 7 already. If you're not familiar with the KP index that's an extremely high number for Missouri. It's an indication of disturbances in the upper atmosphere which we have a lot of thanks to this rapid fire number of Earth-directed solar flares.

Keep an eye on the skies tonight as the sight could be once-in-a-lifetime material and it's almost certainly gonna happen over Missouri.