Aurora watch: Strong solar storms may trigger northern lights this weekend

This weekend brings mainly sunny blue skies and some pretty colors across Minnesota.

But the best sky show may occur at night. There’s a pretty good chance for some northern lights this weekend. Right now, it looks like the best chance may occur Saturday night. But some auroras are already vibing in Europe Friday night.

Solar storms

The sun has been active the past few weeks. This week produced some of the strongest solar storms in as much as 15 years.

Those strong coronal mass ejections are heading for Earth this weekend. Spaceweather.com has more detail on the solar storms.

The most potent CME (#2 in the graphic above) is expected to arrive during the late hours of Oct. 5th (UTC). This could spark a strong strong G3-class geomagnetic storms with auroras at mid-latitudes. For observers in the USA, this means the night of Oct. 5-6.

The other two CMEs (#1 and #3) are less potent. By themselves they might not cause much of a storm. At this time of year, however, even weak CMEs can be effective due to the autumnal Russell-McPherron effect. The collective effect all three CMEs could therefore cause strong storms throughout the forecast interval. 

If they strike Earth’s magnetosphere with the right orientation, we could be in for a vivid sky show.

So keep an eye out for possible northern lights through the weekend. Best viewing conditions are always away from city lights with a good (dark) view to the north. But some indications are auroras could be overhead this weekend if the show explodes.

Windy weekend

Highs Saturday will warm back into the 80s south and 60s to 70s north and central on gusty south winds to 30 mph.

A cold front arrives Saturday night, and Sunday brings gusty winds to 30 mph from the northwest with temperatures about 20 degrees cooler!