The Northern Lights have been untethered from the north.

Time is running out for Canadians and even lucky Torontonians to catch a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis, after researchers reported a disturbance in the Earth’s geomagnetic field that has, in turn, pushed the northern lights south.

It took a few days for the results of a strong solar eruption that occurred on Sunday to reach Earth, but when it did, researchers say it disturbed the particles in the Earth’s geomagnetic field, and pushed the shimmering belts of other-worldly hues south, crossing over areas like Toronto and New York.

“This disturbance from the Sun, which also has some inherited pieces of magnetic field from the Sun, it propagates though interplanetary space and then it hits the Earth’s magnetic field,” said Larisa Trichtchenko, a Space Weather Canada forecaster.

These disruptive particles hit earth at about 10 a.m. Tuesday morning, according to Emma Spanswick, associate director of the Auroral Imaging Group at the University of Calgary.

“It’s almost like a windsock,” Spanswick says, describing the Sun, the solar eruption and the power it has upon the Earth’s magnetic field.

“If the wind starts to blow stronger, and is more dynamic, the windsock contorts more and the windsock is more dynamic itself, flapping around and there’s more energy released. And that’s exactly what happens with the Sun.”

But when the solar eruptions strike (in this case also known as mass coronal ejections), “it’s like a very, very strong wind, a very dense wind” that strikes the windsock — or, the Earth’s geomagnetic field — and sends the usually Yellowknife-hovering northern lights further south.

“To my knowledge, this is the most severe storm we’ve seen in this solar cycle,” Spanswick said.

Spanswick said the northern lights could even reach California sometime Tuesday night, but effects of the G4 (severe) solar storm will likely start wearing off by Wednesday night.