While Thanksgiving may be chilly and rainy in many places around the country, solar storms could provide a glimpse of the Northern Lights for some in the United States
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), mild to moderate geomagnetic storms are likely on Thursday and Friday due to a filamentous eruption on Monday that saw the sun shoot a cloud of high-energy plasma toward Earth.
This outbreak now raises the possibility that the night sky in the United States could glow in shades of green, red and purple for the Thanksgiving holiday.
How bright the auroras are and how long they stay in the sky depends on how strong the solar storms become and whether they even reach G1 or G2 conditions, NOAA meteorologist Mike Bettwy said in an email.
“It is not expected to be a large-scale event, it is likely to last for a short period of time and could be quite weak in the affected locations,” Bettwy said.
Those in states like Washington, Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine are poised to see the northern lights this holiday weekend, and those in the northern parts of Idaho, Wyoming, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire have a chance Also interested in seeing the Aurora Borealis, according to NOAA.