The northern lights flare in the sky over a farmhouse on May 10, in Brunswick. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

A solar storm is about to hit Earth and could cause the northern lights to be visible in the uppermost reaches of the United States on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Forecasters predict the storms will be minor and moderate as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Although toward the lower end of the spectrum, they could disrupt power grids, satellites and high-frequency radio signals.

But it’s not a certainty that the storms will reach those levels, Mike Bettwy, the center’s operations chief, said in an email, and even if they do, forecasters don’t anticipate “any sustained, significant comms disruptions.”

On the bright side, the geomagnetic irregularities could cause the northern lights to be visible to the human eye as far south as New York, the Upper Midwest and Washington state. But Bettwy warned that they won’t be as dazzling as the ones that mesmerized stargazers last month.

“This is not expected to be a widespread event and will likely only last for short intervals and could be quite faint,” he said.

The weather could also play a factor. National Weather Service forecasters predict at least a chance of rain or snow up and down the East Coast, including in nearly all of New England and New York. They believe storms could also hit the Great Lakes region and Montana.

“Areas of cloudiness will, of course, block viewing capability,” Bettwy said.

The coming geomagnetic storms were caused by an explosion of solar particles and energy on the sun called a coronal mass ejection. Depending on their speed, these large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field can reach Earth within hours or days, temporarily disturbing the planet’s protective magnetic bubble.