Look Up, Vermont! Northern Lights A Decent Possibility Tonight

Northern lights over St. Albans, Vermont on May 10.
We could well have a great display of northern lights
again tonight, and skies are forecast to be mostly clear.

 A magnetic storm from the sun is posing what could be the best northern lights display in Vermont since an epic outbreak in May. 

As Vermont Public explains:

"Larger auroras like the ones expected.....Saturday are caused by geomagnetic storms, which occur when the Earth's magnetosphere is disturbed by an explosion of charged particles from the sun."

There were two large solar flares from the sun this week, one of which was the strongest since 2017.

It's always hard to predict how intense a northern lights display will be, but this one looks good. Perhaps not as wild as the one on the night of May 10-11, but you never know. That May display had most of Vermonts sky aglow at times, and people as far south as Miami and Cuba spotted the aurora.

Weather conditions will be great for viewing tonight.  Skies overnight are forecast to be mostly clear, and the air mass overhead is very dry. That means there will be very little haze to interfere with the view. The only places that will have their view blocked are many river valleys late tonight, where areas of dense fog could form. 

The moon won't add any brightness to interfere with viewing, either. A thin crescent moon is scheduled to set before 7:30 tonight, so we won't see that. 

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington estimates the best time for viewing will be between 11 p.m. tonight and 2 a.m. Saturday. But check the sky periodically once it gets completely dark.

If you do go out, bring a warm jacket. This will be the coldest night in Vermont since late April. Expect temperatures in most places to between 38 and 48 degrees by a little after midnight. 

The sun has been quite active this year, resulting in numerous northern lights displays.

If the northern lights appear tonight they won't be as brilliant as you often see in photos that splash across social media when this type of thing happens. Photographers often use long exposures to capture the light more intensely.