Solar storm produces impressive northern lights in the US, UK and Russia | News in photos

An unusually strong solar storm that hit Earth produced stunning displays of color in Northern Hemisphere skies on Saturday morning, with no immediate reports of power and communications outages.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare and severe geomagnetic storm warning as a solar flare hit Earth on Friday afternoon, hours ahead of schedule.

The effects of the Northern Lights, which were on display in the UK, were expected to last until the weekend and possibly into next week.

Many in the UK shared photos of the lights by phone on social media on Saturday morning, with the phenomenon seen as far south as London and southern England.

There have been sightings “up and down the country,” said Chris Snell, a meteorologist at the Met Office, the British weather agency. He added that the office had received photos and information from other European locations, including Prague and Barcelona.

NOAA has warned operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to take precautions.

“For most people here on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

The storm could produce aurora borealis as far south as Alabama and northern California, NOAA said. But it was difficult to predict and experts stressed that it would not be the dramatic curtains of color normally associated with the Northern Lights, but rather splashes of greenish hues.

“That’s really the gift of space weather: the aurora,” Steenburgh said. He and his colleagues said the best views of the aurora may come from phone cameras, which are better at capturing light than the naked eye.

The most intense solar storm recorded in history, in 1859, caused auroras in Central America and possibly even Hawaii. “We’re not predicting that,” but it could come close, said Shawn Dahl, a NOAA space meteorologist.

This storm poses a risk to the high-voltage transmission lines of power grids, not the electrical lines normally found in people’s homes, Dahl told reporters. Satellites could also be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communication services here on Earth.