Well, it was a rare experience over the weekend.

The largest solar storm in nearly two decades hit Earth's atmosphere.

This kind of storm can cause issues for certain communication systems and electrical grids.

Fortunately, though, that didn't happen.

Instead, millions of people were treated to a dazzle flying light show that's typically only viewable far north from here.

Auroras a phenomenon which can be seen in Norman Moore, places on the earth on a regular basis.

But we don't normally see it here.

A path of solar wind particles ejected by the sun a few days earlier.

A puff of solar wind arrived at the vicinity of the earth and made its way down through the Earth's magnetic field to the upper atmosphere.

Lit up the upper atmosphere and that created the phenomenon known as the Northern Lights or the aurora Borealis, which was seen in many places where it's not normally seen, including Kentucky.

As these particles in the sun crash into molecules in the upper atmosphere of the earth, each time a particle from the sun collides with the molecule, it energizes as a molecule, and the molecule then responds by emitting sunlight.

This far south, we don't get auroras very often at all.

I've seen maybe four or five of them in the last 40 years.

From here it's got to be quite a whack from the sun in order to push the auroras this far south.

Typically they're much further north.

So I was ready with my camera set up in my back yard just in case.

At maybe quarter after ten at night, all hell broke loose in the sky.

And by that, I mean not only were there auroras in the north, but there were auroras in the West and even auroras on the southern horizon, On the southern horizon from Kentucky.

That light then from zillions and zillions of molecules in the upper atmosphere of the earth and is visible as kind of a veil or curtain of light as seen as seen here on the earth.

Actually, it turns out that the physical phenomenon that occurs in the upper atmosphere to create the aurora borealis is not unlike the physical phenomena that occurs on a fluorescent light bulb.

I saw pictures of auroras spotted in Puerto Rico and even pictures of auroras from Mazatlan and Mexico.

So the auroras pushed much further south than the experts thought they would.

Even though they knew the strength of the auroras.

But it exceeded even that.

This is probably one of the top five auroral events in the last couple of hundred years, at least.

Wow.

Some incredible pictures there.

If you're curious about what these storms, solar storms due to the sun, don't worry about it.

Professor Toland says the sun is still very healthy and that it is expected to live on for another five or 6 billion years.