Northern lights could glow over WA state and Tri-Cities for 2nd time this month

Residents across Washington state could see the northern lights this weekend, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It has issued a watch alert for a strong geomagnetic storm for Saturday with a lesser possibility that northern lights might also be visible on Halloween.

“Aurora may be visible as low as Pennsylvania to Iowa to Oregon,” according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

The sky in the Tri-Cities should clear up tonight and stay mostly clear for Saturday and Sunday nights, according to the National Weather Service forecast.

For the best chance of seeing the aurora borealis, head outside the Tri-Cities to an area where there is less light pollution. That may mean a drive of as much as 30 to 45 miles to find a really dark place.

Shuttha Shutthanandan, a Tri-Cities resident who likes to photograph the northern lights, usually heads north to the Connell area of Franklin County when one of the northern lights apps he uses predicts that the night light show might be visible as far south as the Mid-Columbia.

This could be the second time this month that the aurora borealis is visible in the Tri-Cities area.

Several residents took pictures of the shimmering green and purple night light show on Oct. 11.

That night, cameras on a long exposure were needed to get a stunning view of the northern lights, with the lights appearing to the naked eye as a gray or green cloudy haze along the northern horizon.

Then northern lights may be visible on Earth when the sun releases a huge bubble of electrified gas in a solar storm. Some of the energy and small particles can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into the Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA.

When the particles interact with oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere, the oxygen gives off green and red light. Nitrogen can glow blue and purple.

This story was originally published October 29, 2021 at 9:25 AM.