The Veterans Day Solar Storm!

After a week of travel for work, then being clouded over as the seasons continue to slowly change, seeing a series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun - including two earth directed CMEs from X class flares - was a welcome surprise! Any boy, did the first CME deliver!

The G4 storm warning from NOAA / SWPC for 11/12 UTC - which fell on the night of 11/11 for Alaska

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The Eklutna Tailrace is about 45min away from Anchorage

I had full days of meetings this week for work, so the best option given the timing of the CME impact (about 2hrs before I was off) was to stick close by.

There's a spot here, the Eklutna Tailrace, that I'd wanted to shoot at when I lived up north - so we decided to give it a go.

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Our first looks at really beautiful color at 6pm

Our First Looks

This was one of the first looks we had before Nautical Twilight had closed - just before 6pm!

The initial action was full of these pinks, reds, and oranges, which was caused by a very high concentration of charged particles (~50p/cm3). These types of colors aren't a common occurrence outside of stronger events.

Fundamentally, the interaction of various atoms at various heights generates an excitement of these charged particles, and during the de-excitement process, our eyes interpret the colors.

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More Of What We Saw

This was overhead at the Eklutna Tailrace

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This was looking to the south - during stronger events, the auroral oval can expand toward the equator, meaning that higher latitudes might actually have to look south to catch aurora in some cases

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These were the looks to the southeast, at the same time we had the activity to the south in the previous shot

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The Strength Of This Storm

On the NOAA / SWPC watch at the top of this blog post, a G4 storm watch was issued. The scale goes upward to G5, but even at a G4, critical infrastructure can have havoc wreaked on it. Things like geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) can cause issues to power infrastructure, GPS and satellites can see disruptions, mitigation efforts have to be taken on the International Space Station, and radio communications can also see disruptions.

It's important to mention that these indices ARE NOT useful for aurora chasing since they don't pinpoint localized activity.

On the HP30 index, which gives more an all-encompassing average of activity in 30 minute increments, you can see we were up there!

The HP30 hit 9 twice, and was between 6-8 for the first half of 11/12.

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The Color During Expansion We Caught

I broke my own rule by moving spots during the growth phase of a substorm, but was still able to catch this from the side of the road while trying to make it back to the Tailrace. This display was one of the largest I've seen in quite some time, and it was about 90min from the first time we saw aurora to this display popping off.

Seeing this also concluded the night for me, since my blower fan in my car started to quit on me & I had to be up early for a full day of meetings at work.

Regardless though, after a couple weeks of poor weather, it was great to catch the first part of this event! This turned out to be the strongest solar storm of 2025 based on the DST (-238nT provisional), and the third strongest of this current solar cycle. Aurora was also documented as far south as the US/Mexico border, southern Florida, Texas, and within Mexico! This storm is also bringing up great debates on evaluating these stronger events, which will come up in discussions for years to come as more research is finalized.

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