Aurora chasers, it’s time to charge up your cameras, don your hats and gloves, and get ready for a long night looking up at the sky. Last night, the best northern lights display of the year dazzled across the continental United States—reaching as far south as Mexico—and it could continue tonight.
The northern lights occur when charged particles from the sun impact the Earth and react with our magnetic field. Those particles can burst forth from the sun via various events, including coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or eruptions of plasma and magnetic fields that often occur alongside solar flares. Since November 9, five major X-class solar flares—the most powerful type of solar flare—erupted from the sun, including the largest one of the year at X5.1 intensity. Two associated CME hit the Earth last night, producing extraordinary auroras across the US. Now, there’s one more on the way.
When such emissions are inbound, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issues geomagnetic storm watches on a scale of G1 to G5. For these recent solar events, it issued a G2 geomagnetic storm watch for Tuesday, November 11, and a G4 watch for Wednesday, November 12. Today, SWPC extended the G4 watch to Thursday, November 13. Keep in mind that SWPC uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is hours ahead of US time zones. In the US, the northern lights are expected to peak the night of November 11 and November 12. Below, everything aurora-hunters need to know to catch the dazzling display.
This article has been updated with new information since its original publish date.
Where can you see the northern lights in the US?
On November 11, viewers in the US were able to see the northern lights as far south as Florida and Texas. If you’re hoping to see the northern lights tonight, the best thing to do is go to the darkest place you can find with clear views to the north after sunset. (That said, the northern lights were visible in heavily polluted cities last night, including New York.) The farther south you are, the lower the northern lights will be on the horizon. In extremely southern locations, you might only see a red glow—that’s because the aurora appears red at high altitudes, with greens coming in closer to the Earth’s surface (and purples and blues below that). Additionally, a weak display might not be visible to the naked eye, but it might show up on a camera—hold up your phone to the night sky, and you might be surprised.
