Big solar flares -- good aurora on Friday night??

This is my favourite, I like the music as well!

AKsilvereagle, thanks for posting that description -- I can only imagine what that was like. I wonder if anyone has gotten video footage of such a fast swirling display? Not sure how I would search for it on youtube.

That sounds like a big hit from an X Flare, as there have been several over the past few days. There may be more today, reaching down into the continental US, hopefully they'll happen in the darkness!

^^^^ That must have been a very cool sight!

Last night, at 130am Wed Oct 30.....I went outside in my backyard to plug in my truck and looked up at the sky to see a few nice typical green colored glow in the dark long moving streak...

All of a sudden a third of the sky was covered as the lights turned white with red streaks and were moving around faster than I ever seen in my 31 years in the far north, I mean like moving 100 times faster in comparison of watching water moving around in a toilet while flushing....I seen the northern lights move around fast in my time every now and then, but not like what I witnessed for 4 straight minutes moving over 1000 times faster than previously ever.

The spectacular display seemed like the lights were getting closer and closer towards the surface of the earth it was practically scary, while seeing the ground of my backyard reflecting the light, first time I ever experienced seeing the ground reflecting light from any northern lights display.

No I am not exaggerating, or was hallucinating either.

After the 4 minutes of what I witnessed, the white and red northern lights were completely gone and only displayed a few green glow in the dark color once again in a fishtailing movement mode.

I had not heard any noise from this aurora though, but man - I doubt I would ever witness any northern lights display like this ever again.

Upon starting my vacation in late August, I hit the road at 1000pm and seen a wild streak of northern lights while approaching Tanacross about 30 miles west of Tok that really caught my attention while driving the camper at 200am at that time....By the time I made it to Tok to overnight, the lights were completely gone.

There has been some pretty active aurora in this area here so far this dark season.

Text from one of Alaska's aurora prediction sites:

A number of solar events occurred this week. They were not strong enough to lead to exceptional auroral activity. An active region is at the east limb of the Sun and it has exploded twice on today, Oct 25th, but the majority of the debris from these events is directed away from Earth. We expect some activity starting on the 26th of Oct. Watch for news of an Earthward directed, X class flare.

My favourite predictor ... great graphic to show where the aurora may or may not be over the north and south poles.

http://helios.swpc.noaa.gov/ovation/

Space weather.com is the single best source of info on the topic. The link in the previous post is good but always a few hours to days behind.

The Geophysical Institute forecast is for moderate aurora activity from Saturday through the end of the month. Perhaps the flares were away from earth rather than toward the earth. Aurora Forecast.

I've been watching this event as well, and it does appear puzzling. The Sun has been very active and is still being so, but it looks as though they have not worked out at what speed this is all coming towards us, and this is maybe why there are no predictions shown.