We were also lucky to see
some auroras in Helsinki! I live in Finland and in northern parts of
our country auroras are very frequent (below is an aurora photo that my friend who lives ín Oulu took during that storm). But t is only a few times per
year you can see them in Helsinki and often it is too cloudy or too
much light. According to so-called Dst index that measures the
intensity of an electric current that circles the Earth the minimum
was -132 nT. When Dst is below -100 nT the storm in the Earth's
magnetosphere is usually called intense. At solar maximum intense
magnetic storms are not uncommon. During the maximum year (year 2000) of the
previous solar cycle 23 there were more than ten intense storms. But
this current solar maximum has been so far quite weak..
Emilia