Missed seeing the northern lights near you? The biggest storm may be yet to come.

[Judi Lynn]

Story by Kasha Patel • 19h • 6 min read

Images of the northern lights began trickling in on social media as night fell. Jordan Pegram, who wanted to cross off seeing the dancing lights from her bucket list, started driving west of Richmond to a cloudless dark area that May evening. At first, she only saw faint pink pillars with her eyes. Then she snapped a photo with her phone, and her jaw dropped. The entire northern sky was painted in pink. She began to tear up.

“My first experience seeing the northern lights was truly mind-blowing,” Pegram said. “I never thought it would happen in south-central Virginia of all places.”

People often spend thousands of dollars to travel to see the northern lights, but in recent months, many have seen the aurora without having to move much beyond their backyard. In the United States, geomagnetic storms have brought auroras to people from California to Texas to Florida. At mid-latitudes, people are seeing green curtains of light typically found near the polar regions. Some are watching the vibrant colors with their eyes, while others see the glows with long exposure shots on their cameras and cellphones.

This aurora extravaganza is just the beginning, scientists say. If you haven’t seen the aurora or are bouncing like an excited electron to see more, bigger events may be on their way over the next few years.

“The next three or four years, we should see some fine displays of aurora,” said Bob Leamon, a solar physicist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and NASA. “It’s like a whole generation of people discovering something for the first time.”

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/channel/topic/Science/tp-Y_3304d105-5132-427d-b027-2f472f2fac07