Green Snow

Green Snow

The next time you're in Northwest Territories of Canada and the snow at your feet turns green, look up. The sky overhead is probably even greener. Spaceweather.com reader Ryan Fisher and his daughter experienced the phenomenon on Saturday night:

"After 5 yrs of trying to share aurora with my daughter, on our first night in Yellowknife the whole sky blew up with green for several hours," says Ryan. "It was a night we will never forget."
The source of the display was a magnetic fluctuation in the solar wind. In the jargon of space weather, "the IMF tipped south." This opened a crack in our planet's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in and ignited the auroras.
It could happen again tonight. Solar wind conditions are disturbed, and the IMF has continued to flutter south. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of geomagnetic storms on Jan. 12.

From SpaceWeather.com