More Northern Lights possible for Colorado Saturday night

Ryan Matoush
·2 min read

(SOUTHERN COLORADO) — Round two of the Northern Lights will once again be possible for Colorado as a particularly strong geomagnetic storm interacts with Earth’s atmosphere. The Lights made their way through a good majority of the country Friday evening, including much of Colorado.

Saturday, our storm intensity is expected to be just as high. The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has the strength set to G5 – which is as high as the scale goes. The SWPC also has our K-Index value set to 9, once again maxing out the intensity scale. These were the same values that the storm produced last night, leading to all of the amazing pictures and videos sent in.

Check out this article here if you’d like to learn more about how the Northern Lights form.

The SWPC has extended its viewing line to include most of Colorado for Saturday night. A similar view line was drawn Friday night from the organization and reports of the Northern Lights extended all the way to Florida and the Bahamas.

Colorado Northern Lights viewers will have one big hurdle Saturday night though: clouds.

Storm-cast is keeping an eye on scattered showers and storms for the rest of the evening here in the viewing area. The abundance of precipitation will likely lead to overcast skies during the event Saturday, unfortunately.

Even by 10:00 Saturday evening, models still have most of the region under mostly cloudy skies and scattered showers/storms. This will make viewing the Northern Lights particularly difficult.

Zooming out to a state view, mostly cloudy skies are draped across the state as an upper-level low-pressure system swirls above us. There is hope though; all it takes is a brief clearing of cloud cover to catch a glimpse of the lights.

Tips this time around:

  • Wait patiently for any breaks in cloud cover, should they occur. The breaks will likely be brief so keep a close eye on the skies.

  • Avoid city lights as best as you can and watch the northern horizon closely

  • Luck was reported last night at some of our higher elevations, so keep that in mind too

If you didn’t get a chance to see the Northern Lights Friday night, and you’re a bit worried you may not see them Saturday night, you can check out all of the photos that FOX21 has collected here.

Be sure to stick with the FOX21 Storm Team for future updates and forecasts.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX21 News Colorado.