Rhode Islanders May See Northern Lights Thursday

RHODE ISLAND — A solar storm made a "direct hit" to Earth Tuesday, which means the storm and more developing ones could trigger aurora borealis displays in Rhode Island and in states where the northern lights almost never, according to NASA space weather physicist and forecaster Tamitha Skov.

Want to see the northern lights? Your best chance appears to be Thursday. But The National Weather Service said Rhode Island will be mostly cloudy Thursday night, with some patchy fog, so seeing them is possible, but may be difficult.

Skov said in a Monday space weather forecast that the snake-like stream of filament that "cartwheeled" off the sun and another "one-two punch" could frustrate emergency crews and others who rely on radio signals, but delight aurora hunters.

Conditions remain favorable over the next week for aurora displays in mid-latitude states such as Oregon, northern California, Colorado, and the Northeast. Visibility could extend as far south as Virginia and North Carolina, according to Skov's forecast.

Skov's prediction that the solar storm that made a direct hit could create auroras proved out. Aurora displays were seen in Seattle as the northern lights danced across Washington state early Tuesday morning. A first-time aurora photographer in South Dakota.

Photographers in mid-latitudes and farther north should keep their camera batteries charged over the next week, Skov said.

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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.

They are never guaranteed, of course, but aurora experts say the busy season for sunspots should peak between 2023 and 2028.

The sun's magnetic field flips polarity about once every 11 years — and we're in the middle of that process, the "solar maximum, solar storm equivalent of the hurricane season, according to Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 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."

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The science behind the aurora borealis is complicated, and all many people care to know is that they're jaw-droppingly beautiful.

The aurora borealis becomes visible to the human eyes when electrons from solar storms collide with the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.

In normal circumstances, the Earth's magnetic field guides the electrons in such a way that the aurora forms two ovals approximately centered at the magnetic poles.