Solar Storm Creates Dazzling Light Show in the Skies

A severe solar storm crashed into Earth with a big geomagnetic jolt on Tuesday, potentially affecting power grids and GPS tracking while pushing the colorful northern lights farther south.

From Europe to Northern Ireland to Alaska and as far south as North Carolina, the magnificent lights exploded into the night sky glowing in vivid, dancing shades of greens and pinks, purples and reds.

Two blasts of magnetic plasma left the sun on Sunday, combined and arrived on Earth about 15 hours earlier and much stronger than expected, said Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

"It's significantly stronger than expected," Berger said. Forecasters had predicted a glancing blow instead of dead-on hit. Another theory is that the combination of the two storms made it worse, but it's too early to tell if that's so, he said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the event was caused by a severe geomagnetic storm. The agency held a rare news conference Tuesday afternoon to a talk about the storm and its effects and said it would subside Wednesday.

These solar flares can come in different sizes, and usually occur near active sunspot regions. A really behemoth sunspot that appeared in 2014, called AR 2192, fired off six large X-class solar flares and four smaller M-class flares.

Below are amazing photos of the auroras: