This morning shortly before sunrise, Chris Kranich spotted the telltale electric-blue ripples over Kiel:
© Chris Kranich
Noctilucent clouds
Noctilucent clouds
Noctilucent cloud season, which begins every year in late spring and stretches into summer, is just getting underway. NASA's AIM spacecraft saw the first NLCs of the northern season on May 24th. Ground-level sightings followed soon thereafter - first on May 30 and then on June 3. So far all of the sightings reported to spaceweather.com have come from Germany.
AIM researchers aren't sure why these early NLCs seem to favor German longitudes, but they're looking into it.
See more noctilucent clouds captured by Chris Kranich here.
Source: SpaceWeather
"Comment: Noctilucent clouds are becoming more frequent and at latitudes where they were almost never seen before"
A rapidly shifting magnetic field (and weakening) underlies the seriousness of the current state of the Sun. It's (lower latitude noctilucent clouds) most likely the handwriting on the wall foretelling the cooling to come. This past winter was merely a light frost compared to what will surely come if Solar Cycle 25 is a total failure.