Phil Ostroff
Audio By Carbonatix
As if they heard about our first winter weather cold snap coming to town, the Northern Lights dropped in on North Texas last evening to truly declare that winter is here. Sightings of a faint glow were reported in Denton, McKinney, Frisco and just about every other ex-urb where a lack of light pollution makes it possible to see the lit-up skies.
The lights popped up last night thanks to a massive burst of solar energy coming from the sun. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines a geomagnetic storm as “a major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth.”
Our northern neighbors got a more impressive light show, but photos posted to social media by the lucky North Texans who caught a glimpse last night show a pinkish blob in the northern sky. Atmospheric scientist Matthew Cappucci posted to X that a red or pink-appearing aurora signals that the energetic particles you’re seeing are 150+ miles above the ground — the very top of the aurora.
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The storm producing the lights is classified as a G4 “severe” storm out of a 5-point scale and is expected to reach its peak by midday Wednesday. As of now, NOAA anticipates intense auroras for some parts of the country tonight, but their view line cuts off around Nebraska. If you remember last year, though, we had several occasions when North Texans were able to see the lights despite NOAA’s forecast ending states away, so not all hope is lost.
Those of us in the city probably won’t have a good chance of seeing the lights, but if you’re outside of Dallas, make sure to take a gander north. If you can’t see anything with the naked eye, try using your phone’s camera to take a long exposure photo. Because cameras capture more light than the human eye, your iPhone can often pick up colors that you may not be able to see with your own eyes.
Storms of this magnitude can interrupt infrastructure such as cellular networks, GPS and radio communications, but so far, no severe outages have been reported.
