The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an animated forecast of the lights' movement and says the best time to see them is within an hour or two of midnight, usually between 10 p.m. They are more visible closest to the equinox, or the longest days of sunlight in the year occurring in the spring and fall. The best time to see the lights is when the sky is clear and dark, according to the institute. 28, 2019, which meant the aurora borealis was visible from northern Minnesota.Īlex Kormann/Star Tribune via Getty Images
The KP index was high in the early morning hours of Saturday Sept. The aurora borealis could be seen on the North horizon in the night sky over Wolf Lake in the Cloquet State Forest in Minnesota around midnight on Saturday morning. "We did - for example - have a G4 storm in late March and again in late April that caused the aurora to be visible as far south as Arizona and Oklahoma," he said. The original forecast that garnered media attention was at a G2, but NOAA recently lowered the forecast to a G1 and then lowered it again below the G scale, Brasher said.īrasher said a G3 or a G4 storm would be needed to see the Northern Lights from mid-latitude states. The scale for measuring these geomagnetic storms is called "the G scale," ranging from a minor storm at G1 to an extreme storm at G5. "As this particular coronal hole rotated back into view – meaning we could see and analyze it – it was clear that it had diminished and we adjusted our forecast accordingly," Brasher told CBS News via email. EST.īryan Brasher, a project manager at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center told CBS News one coronal hole in particular had previously shown elevated activity, so forecasters expected it to do so again. NOAA has an interactive map that shows where above Earth the northern lights are positioned.
Solar wind from coronal holes in the sun flow towards Earth and have a magnetic reaction that causes the northern lights, also called the aurora borealis, according to NASA. NOAA also initially predicted high activity for this week and then downgraded their forecast. This means that the high levels of activity previously expected are now considered much less likely." "However, now that the forecast activity is less than three days in the future, we can see that the solar features that produced the prior activity have actually diminished over the last month. "The features on the sun that produce activity like this typically last 1-3 months, so the active conditions were predicted to occur again this week," a representative for the institute told CBS News via email. University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute A map from University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute shows were above the Earth the northern lights will be on July 13. The institute told CBS News it originally predicted a moderate solar storm – which causes the dazzling phenomenon. Last week, the institute projected the display would be visible in 17 states over those two days: Washington, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and Massachusetts on July 12, and Alaska, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Vermont and Maryland on July 13.
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