You might see Northern lights glow over Washington state for a 2nd time this month

Residents across northern 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.

For the best chance of seeing the aurora borealis, head to an area with low light pollution. That may mean a drive of as much as 30 to 45 miles away from a large city 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 this phenomenon is visible in the state.

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 can 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 10:30 AM with the headline "You might see Northern lights glow over Washington state for a 2nd time this month."