Space hurricanes swirl in the Southern Hemisphere, mostly in summer

Space hurricanes are a recently discovered geomagnetic phenomenon in which plasma interacts with Earth's magnetosphere, the area of space dominated by Earth's magnetic field. Spiral arms of plasma, hundreds of kilometers long, stretch across the sky and turn clockwise around a calm "eye" in the center—forming aurorae shaped much like the hurricanes that occur closer to Earth's surface in the troposphere. Electrons from space rain down into Earth's upper atmosphere, where they have the potential to disrupt satellite communications.