The intensely bright arches of crimson light with shifting spectrum of green, blue-white, and red radiated from a brilliant auroral crown near the zenith instead of appearing as usual in parallel lines.

The storm was remarkable primarily because of how far and wide it was observed, and for the brightness of its green strip lights and red glow, which led many to believe the cause was a fire.

In Descanso, San Diego, the National Forest Service was alerted on the night of January 22 to respond to a "great fire in the backcountry"; after they checked out the back roads they discovered it was the crimson aurora borealis in the northern sky, which had not been seen in that region since February 1888.

In England, the signaling equipment line on the Manchester-Sheffield express trains was inoperable due to electrical disturbances.

Teletype systems at the New York Western Union offices began to spew out garbage data, suffering electrical shortages.

The London-based Royal Observatory Greenwich was able to observe a large sunspot on January 15 due to a short break in the cloud cover.

[2] A rapid succession of solar flares which created much larger geomagnetic disturbance quickly released towards Earth on January 22 between the hours of 05:00, 09:00 and 10:00.

A large movement of the recording magnets at Abinger began at around 17:00 and was extremely noteworthy at 20:00 and 21:30, the geomagnetic disturbance only started calming down at around 03:00 in the morning of January 26.

"[4] The January 25–26 geomagnetic storm of 1938 is alleged by some Roman Catholics to have fulfilled a prophecy by the Carmelite nun, Sister Lúcia Santos.

The second secret allegedly had to do with the beginning of World War II: "When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes..." Lucia wrote that the aurora borealis that took place on this night fulfilled the prophecy, insisting that it was not a natural phenomenon.