Heads up, night owls and sky gawkers: Mother Nature is putting on a show.
The northern lights are expected to dance across 16 states tonight, thanks to another burst of solar fireworks.
A “fairly fast coronal mass ejection” spotted over the weekend prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center to issue a geomagnetic storm watch this week.
Once that solar surge slams into Earth, the northern lights could spill farther south than usual — treating even the Midwest and northern East Coast to a rare cosmic show.
Solar cycle 25 may be on the decline, but aurora enthusiasts aren’t out of luck.
According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, the lights could be visible along the edges of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota.
And that’s not all — you can also catch them in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine — and, of course, Alaska.
Want the best view? It may be best to ditch the streetlamps and city glow, look toward the northern horizon, and keep your fingers crossed for clear skies.
For one night, at least, the sky might just steal the spotlight.
March is prime time for the northern lights, thanks to the spring equinox, according to BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
September delivers another peak during the fall equinox — a pattern known as the Russell-McPherron effect.
Think of the northern lights as the sky’s glow-up when the sun tangles with Earth’s magnetic field.
With the solar cycle near its peak, eruptions like coronal mass ejections and coronal holes are ramping up — sparking more storms.
When they strike, Earth’s magnetic field whips those particles toward the poles — sparking the sky’s signature swaths of color.
As The Post previously reported, the sun unleashed four powerful solar flares Feb. 1–2 — including one of the strongest in 30 years — triggering blackouts.
NASA caught the luminous foursome on camera via its Solar Dynamics Observatory, all erupting from sunspot cluster RGN 4366 as it rotates to stare straight at Earth.
Solar flares are the sun’s explosive blasts of energy, radiating out into space. All four flares scored X-class — the sun’s top-tier intensity, Scientific American reported.
The standout of the celestial foursome? A blazing X8.1-class flare — the strongest since October 2024 and one of the top 20 since 1996, as per SpaceWeatherLive.com.
The X8.1 flare wasn’t just for show—it knocked out radio signals across the South Pacific and scrambled shortwave communications in eastern Australia and New Zealand, as noted by Space.com.
Beyond frying radios, solar flares can light up the sky with dazzling auroras when charged particles slam into Earth’s upper atmosphere and mingle with its gases.
This latest solar salvo could make the northern lights visible across northern U.S. states and parts of Canada.
So why all the flare frenzy? The sun is at its peak activity — the solar maximum — its most explosive phase in the 11-year cycle, the highest it’s been in 23 years.
So tonight, look up, ditch the Wi-Fi, and let the sky put on a light show that even your phone can’t compete with.
