*Photograph: Cillian Murphy
A SOLAR storm resulted in the visibility of the Northern Lights across Co Clare.
On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued the first Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch alert in almost twenty years.
With the onset of a powerful solar storm, it resulted in the visibility of the Northern Lights across Co Clare and the wider country.
According to the NOAA, at least five “earth-directed coronal mass ejections” were observed and expected to arrive as early as today and to persist through until Sunday. It also said several strong flares have been observed over the past few days and were associated with a large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster, which it says is 16 times the diameter of Earth.
Among those to spot the Northern Lights were Cllr Cillian Murphy (FF) after finishing an evening’s canvassing in Doonaha. He commented, “nothing like nature at its best at the end of a long day”.
