Strange Skies.....
................that was the title of the email I received today from Blogmate Bernard "Slatts" Slattery in far south Australia. The Internet is an amazing thing. The email from Slatts, 10 kazillion miles away, referred me to an article I had not seen on an event that occured in my hometown. The strange event was the appearance of the Northern Lights over West Texas caused by largescale solar activity which generated excessive electromagnetic energy.
This is a rare occurence, but not a first time one. As the article referred to in the link explains, activity of this magnitude occurs in 10-12 year cycles and the last time I had seen the phenomenon of the Lights was about 11 years ago +/-. I remember it well because I believe that it occured in the same year that we had an earthquake of a magnitude grand enough to shake the bewillikers out of my bed and wake me up in the middle of the night. It was also not long after these two concurrent strange events that I gave up strong drink, something I had been meaning to do for quite awhile. Well OK, something other people had been meaning for me to do for quite awhile. But apparently the Northern Lights and Earthquake in conjunction did the trick for me.
As a footnote, this occurence of the Lights and the electromagnetism that caused them, almost had a dire economic effect. We were using a GPS system to locate the top of the old abandoned oil well mentioned in a previous post. Very shortly after we had located the well, our GPS system was knocked out by the burst of solar energy, as were our cellphones at the remote location 40 miles north of town. It could have cost us several days delay.
................that was the title of the email I received today from Blogmate Bernard "Slatts" Slattery in far south Australia. The Internet is an amazing thing. The email from Slatts, 10 kazillion miles away, referred me to an article I had not seen on an event that occured in my hometown. The strange event was the appearance of the Northern Lights over West Texas caused by largescale solar activity which generated excessive electromagnetic energy.
This is a rare occurence, but not a first time one. As the article referred to in the link explains, activity of this magnitude occurs in 10-12 year cycles and the last time I had seen the phenomenon of the Lights was about 11 years ago +/-. I remember it well because I believe that it occured in the same year that we had an earthquake of a magnitude grand enough to shake the bewillikers out of my bed and wake me up in the middle of the night. It was also not long after these two concurrent strange events that I gave up strong drink, something I had been meaning to do for quite awhile. Well OK, something other people had been meaning for me to do for quite awhile. But apparently the Northern Lights and Earthquake in conjunction did the trick for me.
As a footnote, this occurence of the Lights and the electromagnetism that caused them, almost had a dire economic effect. We were using a GPS system to locate the top of the old abandoned oil well mentioned in a previous post. Very shortly after we had located the well, our GPS system was knocked out by the burst of solar energy, as were our cellphones at the remote location 40 miles north of town. It could have cost us several days delay.
