Will you be able to see the Northern Lights in Texas?

TEXAS, United States — An unusually strong solar storm could produce northern lights across the United States this weekend and potentially disrupt power and communications. But will you be able to see them in Texas?

Believe it or not, there is a chance, even for us here in Southeast Texas. This solar storm is so extreme that the Northern Lights are visible as far south as Tybee Island, near Savannah, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama. If you live outside of the city of Houston, you may see the faint glow of the Northern Lights on the horizon tonight if you look north.

If you have photos, share them with us via the Near Me feature of our news app.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning when a solar burst reached Earth Friday afternoon, hours earlier than expected. The effects were expected to last through the weekend and possibly into next week. NOAA alerted operators of power plants and orbiting spacecraft to take precautions, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“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.

If they are visible this far south, experts have stressed they would not be the spectacular curtains of color normally associated with the Northern Lights, but rather pops of greenish hues.

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

Take a photo of the sky and “there might be a little treat there for you,” said Mike Bettwy, chief of operations for the forecast center.

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

This storm — rated 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 — poses a risk to high-voltage transmission lines in power grids, not power lines typically found in homes, Dahl told reporters. Satellites could also be affected, potentially disrupting navigation and communications services on Earth.

An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003, for example, knocked out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.

The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, resulting in at least seven plasma explosions. Each flare – known as a coronal mass ejection – can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.

The flares appear to be associated with a sunspot whose diameter is 16 times that of Earth, according to NOAA. It’s all part of solar activity that intensifies as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.

NASA said the storm posed no serious threat to the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The biggest concern is increased radiation levels, and the crew could move to a better-protected part of the station if necessary, according to Steenburgh.

Increased radiation could also threaten some NASA science satellites. The extremely sensitive instruments will be turned off, if necessary, to avoid damage, said Antti Pulkkinen, director of the space agency’s heliophysics science division.

Multiple sun-focused spacecraft monitor all the action.

“This is exactly the kind of thing we want to observe,” Pulkkinen said.