Massive solar storm: Seattle, Portland, even N. Calif. may see auroras

The beautiful thing about a solar flare that ruptures a filament of the sun's magnetic field and fires plasma into space — a coronal mass ejection — is that when it hits Earth, we get expanded northern lights or aurora. If the ejection is big enough, and hits the Earth just right, you can spot aurora much farther south than usual.

The current plasma burst from the sun stems from an M5 or relatively medium-strength flare on Monday. The flare's geomagnetic storm, the space weather version of a small hurricane, is projected to arrive late Wednesday, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. (Note that space weather changes and so the agency's predictions will evolve as the week goes on.)

The outer range of visibility for the resulting aurora could stretch south over Washington, Oregon and as far as the tip of Northern California. (There's a map in gallery above.)

NOAA provides a very informative caveat to its projections: "This probability forecast is based on current solar wind conditions measured at L1, but using a fixed 30-minute delay time between L1 and Earth. A 30-minute delay corresponds to approximately 800 km/s solar wind speed as might be encountered during geomagnetic storming conditions. In reality, delay times vary from less than 30 minutes to an hour or so for average solar wind conditions."

So, if you see greenish, waving lights in the very northern edge of the sky ... well, it might not be an hallucination.

The flare and mass ejection erupted from two "large sunspot groups." The two regions cover a lot of solar turf but only one of them is kicking out space weather.

"RGN 2674 (see photo above) has a fairly simple bipolar magnetic structure and is expected to remain inactive. However, there is good magnetic shear and mixed polarities present in within the more complex RGN 2673; therefore it is much more likely to produce solar flares and events - which has been the case," NOAA wrote.

The agency adds that as of Tuesday, you the two sunspot groups were still visible on the face of the sun, and you don't need a satellite to see them.

"The two regions (2673 and 2674) cover large amounts of the solar surface and with the proper and safe solar filters, are visible without a telescope. Remember, do not look at the Sun without a proper solar filter; if you still have your certified and undamaged eclipse glasses for example, you can use those to see these two sunspot groups for yourself!" NOAA enthused.

So, look to the norther sky. You might catch some serious space weather cresting upon our magnetic field.

Jake Ellison can be reached at jakeellisonjournalism@gmail.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.