Will northern lights be visible in Arizona again soon? Here's what you need to know

Seeing the northern lights dance across the sky is a bucket list event for many.

For some lucky Arizonans, it just took a step outside and some patience to spot the celestial phenomena after a series of coronal mass ejections from the sun made the auroras more widely visible.

But when will it happen again?

Even though experts say conditions are primed for more aurora shows over the next few years, predicting exactly when and where they occur will continue to be a challenge.

Here's what Arizonans need to know about the northern lights and when they might again be visible in the Grand Canyon State.

What are solar cycles? What is the solar maximum?

Solar cycles track the activity level of the sun, our nearest star. A cycle is traditionally measured by the rise and fall in the number of sunspots, but it also coincides with increases in solar flares, coronal mass ejections, radio emissions and other forms of space weather.

"The sun has an 11-year cycle where it goes through maximum and minimum," Shannon Schmoll, the director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University, told USA TODAY in an interview last year. "This results in the number of sunspots seen on the sun. Sunspots result from areas of the sun that have stronger magnetic fields."

The number of sunspots on the sun's surface changes on a fairly regular cycle, which scientists refer to as the sun's 11-year solar cycle. Sunspot activity, and hence auroral activity, tends to peak every 11 years.

Sunspots produce solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which create the geomagnetic storms here on Earth that cause the aurora to appear.

Northern lights 2024: How to see the aurora borealis in the US and around the world

"We are entering the peak of Solar Cycle 25," Erica Grow Cei, a spokesperson for the National Weather Service, told USA TODAY this week in an e-mail. "This period of heightened activity is expected to last into the first half of 2025," she added, meaning that additional chances for seeing the aurora will continue for at least the next year.

Kaelin said the 11-year solar maximum "holds enormous potential for aurora chasers, but until Friday (May 10), we were worried it was going to be a quiet year." She said that although there had been a number of impressive solar flares, "the ejections of solar wind that these eruptions create have been mostly directly away from Earth. Until now!"

One solar flare that blasted off the sun this week was the strongest in seven years, but it was pointed away from the Earth, scientists said.

When will the northern lights be visible in Arizona again?

What's the northern lights forecast for the days and months ahead?

"More chances may wait for us in the days ahead as we watch the number of sunspots on the sun explode," Kaelin said this week via e-mail. "But we can only predict these impacts with any certainty about three days in advance, and it's an emerging science.

"Humans still have a lot to learn about space weather," she admitted.

Indeed, the aurora can be fickle to forecast. Unlike terrestrial weather, scientists who forecast space weather – which includes the aurora – must rely on observations of the sun, 93 million miles away, to make their predictions.

"There are so many uncertainties, it makes it difficult to predict," Bill Murtagh, the program coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center, told USA TODAY last year. And as hard as it is to forecast weather here on Earth, "we are decades behind the forecast capabilities of our colleagues in meteorology," he admitted, referring to space weather.

Northern lights in Arizona

It's not entirely unusual for Arizonans to see the northern lights, though it is rare.

During the most recent series of coronal mass ejections from the sun, Arizonans shared photos of the celestial spectacle showing the red and purple colors of the aurora lighting up the sky.

While the northern lights will be more vibrant further north, there is a chance they could be seen in Arizona. This happened back in 2023 when Robert Ray captured the aurora lights from his backyard in Eagar.

"I was that excited to capture the northern lights," he said. "They were very faint to the naked eye, but could definitely tell they were there."

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Northern lights in Arizona: Will auroras be visible again in 2024?