A solar storm will send extraordinary displays of colorful lights through the skies of northern countries, but may interfere with electrical equipment and power supplies.
While this display is unlikely to cause anything worse than “minor fluctuations” in power, experts warn that solar storms are not always harmless. In an October 2016 executive order, US President Barack Obama said that “extreme space weather events… could disable large portions of the electrical power grid, resulting in cascading failures that would affect key services such as water supply, healthcare, and transportation.” The order called for more “timely and accurate operational space weather forecasts” as well as “protection and restoration of the reliability of the electrical power grid” in the case of outages caused by geomagnetic disturbances. The most recent solar storm of note occurred in October 2003, damaging several satellites and shutting down the Federal Aviation Administration GPS augmenter for thirty hours.

source: sputniknews.com