Today, Thursday, and tomorrow night you might be able to enjoy the fantastic sight of the the aurora borealis as far south as in parts of New York. That is, if the weather cooperates.
The best chance for northern lights displays is on Thursday, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. In New York, the best chance to see the northern lights — again, weather permitting — will be points west and north of Delaware, Greene and Columbia counties.
On Sunday, a plasma cloud known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, was launched from the sun. Since then, the cloud of charged gas has been heading toward Earth at a high speed and is “expected to arrive at Earth as a glancing blow” on Thursday, potentially producing aurora displays “over the far Northeast to the far upper Midwest, across portions of the north-central states, and perhaps over the northwest section of Washington state.”
Solar storms 93 million miles from Earth occur with more frequency midway through an 11-year cycle in which the sun’s magnetic fields flip polarity — and that means the northern lights could dance more often in the next decade or so. Aurora experts say the busy season for sunspots should peak between 2023 and 2028. We’re now in the middle of that 11-year cycle– the solar maximum, solar storm equivalent of the hurricane season, according to Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the Space Weather Prediction Center.
“The sun has negative and positive polarity, just like Earth,” Murtagh told meteorologist Jennifer Gray. “During this 11-year period, it does a reversal of the polarity. So negative becomes positive and positive becomes negative. During the middle of that process and transition, that’s when those sunspots emerge. So we go through a process when we are in the middle of this transition, we get lots of sunspots and lots of space weather.” Be on the lookout for the chance to see the exhilarating Northern Lights.
