The biggest solar storm in two decades, caused by solar flares, “lit up” the skies with dazzling colors in parts of Latin America last night, including Mexico.

In the Mexicalia desert town in northern Mexico, thousands of miles from the Arctic, where sightings of the northern lights are common, shades of pink and purple lit up the night sky.

The civil protection service in the Mexican state Baja California said more aurora borealis may be visible Saturday evening.

In Chile, where the auroras are known as the “southern aurora” or “southern lights,” local media and social media users posted photos of the sky above the city of Punta Arenas, with the sky filled with red and fuchsia hues.

Local media in Argentina reported similar hues in the sky in the city Ushuaia of Patagonia.

The phenomenon is likely to last through the weekend.

“We are almost certain that charged solar particles ejected from the Sun’s corona are heading toward Earth,” Shawn Dahl of the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) said at a press conference yesterday. The Center issued a Category 4 geomagnetic storm warning (on the five-point scale), which has not happened since 2005.

The Sun is currently near the peak of its activity based on its 11-year cycle. These coronal mass ejections, of which at least seven are directed toward Earth, originate from a sunspot about 16 times the diameter of Earth. They move at a speed of several hundreds of kilometers per second.