(NEXSTAR) – Despite previous forecasting, the Northern Lights may not actually be very visible in the U.S. this week, experts say.
Over the weekend, the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks released a forecast calling for auroral activity on Thursday across 17 states spanning the northern U.S. and as far south as Indiana.
The anticipated solar storm that was expected to cause the Northern Lights may not live up to the hype, experts warned Tuesday. It may not have existed to begin with, Bill Murtagh, the program coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told The Washington Post.
A research associate professor from the Geophysical Institute, Don Hampton, said in a statement released Monday that “there are only a few satellites and instruments dedicated to collecting” the data used to forecast auroras.
He added that while solar storms can lead to the Northern Lights here on Earth, “once they leave the local solar vicinity they cannot be tracked,” NBC reports.
“During this time the solar storms can be slightly diverted or even reduced, and the final impact on Earth’s magnetic field may be different than predicted.”
While the Sun has been active lately (here’s why), forecasters say there hasn’t been any activity recently that would make the Northern Lights widely visible later this week.
Though you likely won’t see the colorful celestial display in the coming days, you may have a chance again in the coming weeks and months.
As previously mentioned, the Northern Lights are sparked by activity on the sun. That includes coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, which are explosions of plasma and magnetic material from the sun that can reach Earth in as little as 15 to 18 hours, NOAA explains. CMEs can create currents in Earth’s magnetic fields that send particles to the North and South Poles. When those particles interact with oxygen and nitrogen, they can create auroras.
“It’s essentially the Sun shooting a magnet out into space,” Murtagh previously told Nexstar. “That magnet impacts Earth’s magnetic field and we get this big interaction.”
That interaction is known as a geomagnetic storm, the strength of which will impact how far south the northern lights will be visible.
We’ve already had multiple chances this year, thanks to Solar Cycle 25, which began in December 2019. During solar cycles, the Sun flips its magnetic poles and causes space weather, which is “variations in the space environment between the Sun and Earth,” like CMEs.
Thankfully, we’re approaching the maximum phase of the solar cycle, Murtagh tells Nexstar. That puts us “right in the middle of the reversal,” he explains, noting that experts believe we’ll reach the peak of the solar cycle in 2024 or 2025.
“The [solar] cycle is rising faster and when it rises faster, it’s typically bigger,” Murtagh explains. “The bigger the cycle, the more eruptions [on the Sun], the more likely we see the aurora, bottom line.”
We could see strong geomagnetic storms as often as every month, he adds. While it can be difficult to tell when exactly the U.S. will have the chance to see the aurora borealis, NOAA does offer single-day and next-day forecasts for potential northern light viewing.
Current forecasts, available for Tuesday and Wednesday, show little to no likelihood of residents in the U.S. seeing the Northern Lights. Chances are better for those living in Alaska and much of Canada.
With the exception of the late-April geomagnetic storm that sent the northern lights into the south-central U.S., recent aurora borealis events have only been viewable to the upper portions of the U.S. – Washington, the northern tip of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and parts of New York and Maine.
Want to increase your chances of seeing the auroras? Head north – Alaska and Canada frequently have the opportunity to catch the stunning colors light up the sky.
