[FM] Is This An Aurora? - May 11 2024

The evening & night of May 10th-11th, 2024, brought a historically strong G5 geomagnetic storm - first since 2003 - and remarkable aurora showcases as far down as Florida Keys (24.7 N latitude!).
Now, I know auroras can produce exceptional DX conditions on VHF, but I've never experienced this on my own - neither on BC FM nor on 2m.
Finally I did see a couple spread-spectrum CW signals at 144.05-144.1 MHz after midnight local, which eventually prompted me to record a bit of FM band for a couple hours. At first, the signals were weak, but intensified, peaking around 01:00-01:40 UTC (times displayed by SDR-Console are off due to the app assuming a UTC timestamp in the name of the IQ file, while I recorded it with SDR#, which names the files according to local time instead). But despite relatively strong signals, audio recovered was weak & noisy. I did hear news in German on 91.1 MHz at 01:00 UTC though.
I suppose this is what an actual aurora looks like on the FM band. It is very strange indeed! And all that was heard on a 15x4.5m unterminated loop, a way oversized antenna for 3m FM band!

[@dxer22000]

sounds like aurora DX to me. Well done. You can tell by the distortion & sizzling effect

[@ParamDxer]

Great observation from your end during the early hours of the day. In Malta we lack such element due to being much to the southern part of the Northern Hemisphere, although it is claimed that Libya witnessed the G5 Geomagnetic storm but no receptions was reported. The most distanced receptions reported that were due to the Northern Lights came from Calabria but not more than that. Cheers and thanks for sharing Arnie 73!

[@JosePun1230]

That's great. Thanks for your sharing.73

[@dxer22000]

The Aurora is big here in Australia atm. Mainly FM from Mildura, Melbourne & Swan Hill VIC. Will upload recordings later.

[@ArnieDXer]

Wow, sounds like a treat! 🍬 enjoy!