As we mentioned in the blog Thursday, there's a particularly active sunspot on the sun right now.
It had, as its opening salvo while starting to face the Earth, unleashed a moderately strong solar flare that reached us late Friday, triggering a display of the Northern Lights that reached as far south as Colorado.
The sun has been getting quite active lately, with one sun spot in particular giving off several explosive flares this week, and it could eventually bring some brilliant displays of the Northern Lights to the Pacific Northwest.
Since Monday, Sunspot AR1748 has already given off four "X-class" solar flares -- X being the most powerful class of flares that have potential to disrupt radio and satellite signals. In fact, that flare has given off more X-class flares than every other sunspot of the past year combined, according to spaceweather.com.
Up to this point, the spot has been on a part of the sun not directly facing Earth, so the flares have been directed away from our planet and not really giving us much of an effect.
You've probably seen video of flash floods before, but for these homeowners in Minnesota, it was a little different this weekend: A "flood" of ice.
A woman on Minnesota's Mille Lacs Lake snapped this video of what some are calling an "ice out tsunami."
"Just sounded like shattering glass," Darla Johnson told WCCO-TV. "It was pushing and breaking and pushing and breaking."
SEATTLE-- Missing: Middle ground. Last seen several months ago. Description: Temperatures of medium build, 60-65 degrees, with clouds that weigh about 2-3 days' worth of rain a week.
Once again, Seattle is locked into a weather pattern that features either a stretch of cool, wet weather or a period of warm, dry weather, with nary a mixture of the two in between.
Friday's sunshine with temperatures rising well into the 70s, if not low 80s in some spots, is extending an all-time record spanning almost 120 years of Seattle history: The first 10 days of May are going to finish warmer than 65 degrees with zero rain in the rain gauge.* The old record for both zero rain to start a month and have all days 65 degrees highs or warmer was eight.