It was a colorful display in the North Carolina sky on Thursday as a geomagnetic storm brought out the Northern Lights across the United States on Thursday evening.

Several North Carolina residents began sending WRAL News photos of the phenomenon around 7:25 p.m

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) had issued a G4 geomagnetic storm watch. It comes in response to an Earth-bound coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted from the sun on Tuesday evening.

The CME was accompanied by a strong solar flare, as observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

According to SWPC forecasters, these events will produce auroras visible low on our northern horizon and higher in the sky in states from the mid-Atlantic to Northern California. Those in the green areas on the forecast map below are more likely to see aurora overhead, lower in the sky in white areas and along the northern horizon up to the solid green line.

Skygazers are reminded to point their smartphones upward for photos; the devices can often capture aurora that human eyes cannot.

Before the light show, many residents have several questions: Will this be a repeat of the G5 event in May? Will we be able to see more of the aurora in the Carolinas?

“The potential is there, but we won’t know until the CME arrives at (the) spacecraft,” NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl explained at a news conference Wednesday.

Dahl was referring to NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and NOAA’s The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) missions that monitor space weather from L1, a point of gravitational balance between Earth and the Sun.

Instruments on board these missions monitor changes in the solar wind and measure particles and their magnetic polarity. That polarity is just as important as the strength of the storm in determining how far south the aurora can be visible.

If the polarity matched the Earth’s magnetic field, it would repel the particles, just as any magnet would.

But if ACE and DSCOVR discovered that the initial bow shock had the opposite polarity, the CME could connect to Earth’s doughnut-shaped magnetic field, guiding charged particles deeper into the lower latitudes.

Even from that point, about 1 million kilometers from Earth, we only get between 15 and 60 minutes of warning about how intense the storm could be, depending on the CME speed, before it reaches Earth.

Unlike May’s G5 event, which was powered by multiple CMEs traveling at different speeds and merging together when they arrived on Earth, forecasters didn’t think Thursday’s event would be as strong. But forecasters estimate the chances of raising the G4 to the G5 level needed to achieve greater visibility in our area are around 25%.

That scenario would have pushed the show deeper south into the Carolinas.

Geomagnetic storms affect Earth with more than just beautiful auroras. They can affect radio and satellite communications such as the transmission of electricity.

The SWPC is alerting FEMA along with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which manages the electrical grids. This happened about six hours before the G5 storm in May.

“While all the Hurricane (Helene) relief efforts were going on and (Hurricane Milton) was approaching… we contacted them immediately.”