'Dancing across the sky,' northern lights visible in Caldwell County
May 13—CALDWELL COUNTY — The night-owls of Caldwell County had a chance to witness a true spectacle the evening of Friday, May 10, as the Aurora Borealis was visible in the lower 48 states. Sightings of the lights occurred between 10 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., with the aurora more clearly visible away from areas of high light pollution.
The northern lights are visible due to interactions between solar winds and the earth's magnetic field, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). While the earth's magnetic field shields the planet from the strongest effects of the energized plasma ejected by the sun, solar winds can transfer energy into the atmosphere, which produces the lights, according to NOAA.
The sun will often emit bursts of particles with coronal mass ejections, CMEs, which produce large amounts of energized plasma and widely visible auroras. NOAA witnessed such an event on May 8, with the resulting lights seen 2 days later when the flare reached Earth. While it is common for some aurora to be visible near the poles, it is comparatively rare that the northern lights are visible as far south as North Carolina.
Lisa Crouch, a resident of Hudson, saw the lights at Redwood Park while participating in Friday night's Light the Way 5k event hosted by Poovey's Chapel Baptist Church. Crouch said she received a call from her son in Gastonia, who told her the lights were visible. Crouch thought the bright pink streaks in the sky were projected by a company until she realized she and her son were seeing the same thing at the same time.
"It was total amazement," Crouch said. "It's something I've always wanted to see, and we didn't have to travel to Iceland to see it."
Crouch had a better view of the lights later in the evening at home, away from the streetlights near Redwood.Lenoir resident Donald Alm was out watching a trail of Starlink satellites when his wife noticed a streak of color in the western sky with her phone. Alm says that, as the aurora developed, he became able to see the red with the naked eye.
"It was quite unexpected," Alm said. "I expected to see something with some long-exposure photographs, to see something in the northern part of the ... but we actually saw something in the western sky first."
Donald and his wife, Stephanie, took to Facebook to spread the news with friends and family to tell them to go outside and look up. The couple brought out their children out to see the lights and point out constellations.
"The lights got brighter as it got darker," Alm said. "Before I knew it it was directly overhead. That made my jaw drop. It got so bright that you couldn't see some of the fainter stars. We were going nuts ... it kept getting better as the hour went by, like it was dancing across the sky."
Alm is a stargazer who has been interested in space his whole life, but became involved in astronomical photography in 2020. He is a member of the Catawba Valley Astronomy Club in Hickory, and frequently takes photos of space from his driveway. Alm compares seeing the northern lights to having the chance to see the total solar eclipse on April 8.
"With the eclipse we knew what was going to happen and where to go, but this caught us by surprise. The only warning we had was on Tuesday or Wednesday when we learned there were some solar flares. That's when we first had an idea of when to follow it ... there was some anticipation that something like this could happen some time this week. It usually takes some 2-3 days for the energy that causes the lights to reach the sky."
More solar storms produced lights in the northern US for the remainder of the weekend, with NOAA forecasting additional lights potentially visible in the northernmost states on Tuesday night.
