The Sun continues to put on a parade of solar activity this week, creating better chances for observing the Northern Lights in the United States this weekend.

On Thursday morning (Sept. 12), a yet-to-be-numbered sunspot region made its presence known by unleashing a class X1.3 solar flare. Class X solar flares are the most powerful of their kind and are typically accompanied by a complete or partial loss of high frequency (RF) radio signals at sunlit locations on our planet. The high-energy flare, which peaked at 5:43 a.m. EDT (9:43 UTC), impacted communications bands in Africa, Europe and parts of Asia this morning.

Meteorologists at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center will continue to analyze the data to confirm how many more coronal mass ejections could reach Earth’s magnetic field, both from the X-class flare and from a group of M-class flares (the second most powerful in their class) that were also produced early Thursday from two former sunspots, or active regions (AR), designated AR 3811 and AR 3814.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) also reported that a G3 (moderate) geomagnetic storm occurred Thursday morning (September 12) at 10:46 a.m. EDT (2:46 p.m. UTC). This is the third level on a scale of five.