Aurora Borealis

[Glenn MacGrady]

Have you ever seen the aurora borealis (northern lights) where you've lived or paddled? Pictures?

I've never seen the aurora any place I've lived in New York, southern Maine, Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, northern California, southern California, or Connecticut. Nor have I seen it paddling in Alaska, southern Ontario, New Brunswick or Prince Edward Island.

The only place I've seen the lights is on a few canoe trips in northern Maine in late summer.

 

[billconner]

Well, yes. A few occasions in US but I lived less than 30 miles from Artic Circle in Sweden and it was a nightly event and amazing.

I'll try to find a trip report where we saw an amazing display on Dissapointment Lake in BWCAW.

 

[Boatman53]

I saw some in the BWCA this past September. Coldfeet shared the tip of using a flash to photograph the lights. Sound counter intuitive but it works. Without the flash I just got blackness. I have seen better even a red display in the high peaks of the ADKs. I was above the Arctic circle in Norway but I was there in June so it never got dark enough.


Jim

 

[ppine]

I have seen them from the North Cascades a couple of times in Washington. They were always green.

I have have seen them working SE Alaska. North of Fairbanks in Alaska they are brilliant even by Sept. Full colors and big curtains all the way across the sky. I got up to piss once and the sky was on fire. I woke up my companion and we sat in lawn chairs and drank a few beers watching them for 3 hours.

 

[Mason]

They were visible on the Noatak (AK) trip last year, but at 1am, so I missed them. I've lived in Alaska, Wyoming and Montana--they were always visible there at some time, usually in the winter (when days are short and people are still out and about when it's dark (e.g. 4pm in AK)).

 

[snapper]

No photos because this was long before cell phones. I was driving home from Cortland, NY after attending a meeting at the college. As I was approaching Norwich I saw white lights in the distance. All I could think of was there was an auto dealership going "old school" and beaming light up into the sky. Not long after the white lights started they began to appear in waves. Eventually they were joined by greens, reds, purples, etc. I watched this display in my front windshield all the way home to Oneonta. It was amazing and something I'll never forget.

I also had a much smaller display appear one January evening while camping on Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks. I was on a winter course with SUNY Cortland and we had our students out for their overnight. A student had gone out onto the ice to see the stars and asked if anyone knew why there were green lights shimmering in the sky? Not as impressive as my first encounter with them but still a wonderful experience.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper

 

[yellowcanoe]

Once in Canton NY
They happened near my work in Deering area of Portland.. I was stuck in an LLBean cubicle and missed the show not two miles away
They happen regularly here in Maine but altitude helps or a clear view of the northern sky that you can get from being on a Maine island. I am in the forest and at 300 feet.
There was a nice show in Boothbay about two weeks ago. I was in bed. Boothbay isn't far.

We require about a Kp level of 6

Space Weather Enthusiasts Dashboard | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center

www.swpc.noaa.gov

 

[Cheeseandbeans]

I buddy woke me up at camp on the VT Canada border several years back. I was pretty ticked till I saw what he was excited about… beautiful.

Bob

 

[Gamma1214]

Not yet. I didn't have any idea that I was far enough north on my BWCA trip or I'd have set an alarm for the middle of the night. I'm hoping to have better luck on the Steel river next summer.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Kp level of 6

The new things I learn on a canoe site!

 

[Odyssey]

I've seen them a number of times, both in summer and winter but seldom while camping.
We've enjoyed faint light shows here in southern Ontario in summer, that was many years ago. One time when the kids were young, we gathered outside our front door to gaze upwards together all of us in pyjamas. Staying up past bedtime might've been the bigger treat. A few years later living in another home we walked down the street to a nearby park and climbed the tobogganing hill for a better view. We took blankets and were determined to stay until they faded. We wound up carrying at least one sleepy head home that night.
It felt special to see them above Lake Superior on a family camping trip one summer. They appeared to continue what the blazing setting sun had started with orange and red bleeding across the horizon followed by ghostly spikes of white and green shooting upwards.
We were wowed by the intensity of the aurora borealis over several evenings in Manitoba one winter visit with family. The skies are big where the lands are flat, so it was hard to miss the light show one evening driving into the city, with every car window filled with the velvet black sky and shimmering satin sheets of green, white and blue. We finally just stopped the car in the middle of the empty road and got out to watch.
The colours and movement were so strong the skies looked depthless, like we could reach out and touch it all.
One winter on a visit to a family farm in Ontario's near north we built a bonfire and sat on straw bales continuing the party that had started hours before in the kitchen. (That happens a lot in my family.) Your choice of tipple, your choice of nibbles, and your turn for stories kept the party going round and round the fire, but eventually one by one the tired and the chilled straggled off into the house for bed. I was one of the lucky ones still wide awake and feeding the fire when the northern lights showed up. We sent someone indoors to tell the others to hustle back outside to see them, but most had already succumbed to sleep. There was a sparse but enraptured crowd quietly standing in the field of snow that night. Nobody dared speak until the last green flame echoed northwards.
I haven't seen any in recent years though I keep hoping. For me personally, the more rural the location the more spectacular the experience. As special the occasion might be viewing the aurora from my small city porch, I'd far rather view these wild phenomena in wilder places. But nothing will stop me from herding the grandkids outside in their pyjamas onto grandpa's back porch to see the northern lights. Bedtimes bedamned.

 

[stripperguy]

I've seen them many times in and around home here in Schenectady...
When I lived with my parents the doors would be locked on an ever changing schedule, and if I missed the curfew, well, better find a place to sleep.
Saw auroras plenty of times from the backyard when I was 13, 14, 15 years old.
Also had impressive backyard displays in Schenectady around 1985. For a few years we lived on a mountain ridge in Pattersonville, it was always dark there, no nearby light pollution. We would see auroras several times a year, thanks to the expansive views and the dark skies.

Camping, we often would see a display, but generally short lived.
Except for this one time at Little Tupper Lake. 1999? or maybe 2000 was a very dry year, there was a fire ban. MDB and I would have been sitting fireside, but with the fire ban we perched our chairs on the beach and watched the sun go down. Just around sundown, I told MDB that some clouds looked "funny" and said we should keep an eye on them. Sure enough, those "clouds" were the start of an hours long display of greens, reds, purples in waves and curtains, with bursting bright white rays every few minutes. It was the most impressive auroras we had ever seen. We were at site 11 or 12 at the end of the lake, but we could hear folks on the next nearest sites gasping and oohing and aahing in hushed tones, the same as we did.
By 10:00 pm or so it all faded away.
We would have missed it all if we were huddled around a fire...

 

[recped]

Living in a mega-city there is zero chance of seeing them here. On the other hand while paddling it's not that unusual although most of the time the "show" is pretty modest.

Perhaps the best ever was in 2003 at the headwaters of the Moisie River in Quebec. Cloudless night with a full moon and ultimately more than half the sky filled with multi-coloured waves of pulsating light. This pic is early in the show.
.

 

[stevet]

Saw them once at Two Hearted River campground on north shore of Michigan UP….faint but still beautiful.

 

[lowangle al]

If you are above 60 degrees north the aurora isn't visible for most of the paddling season. I would say there is too much light from May until the middle of August, when they might appear very late in the evening. I have only seen them a few times in September while tripping..

 

[yknpdlr]

A few rare times from the western Adirondacks area. The large display in March of 1989 when a CME arrived causing a geomagnetic storm and shut down the power grid in Quebec was most impressive. I'll never forget the deep red colors giving the appearance of expanding in bomb-blast-like "explosions" continuously occurring in all parts of the sky, even from the far southern direction. You can check the potential auroral forecast at any time on spaceweather.com. Of all the times I was in Alaska, just once for 45 days in the Air Force, even flying over the North Pole in late December, it was a year of solar minimum and don't recall any bright displays at that time. All my other five visits have been during June-July canoe race season when the sky never got dark enough to see anything.

 

[Stillwater's]

I saw them occasionally when I was living in the northeastern Adirondacks, though not when camping. Maybe once in the last twenty years (in Vermont, but not far from where I was in NY).

 

[yellowcanoe]

near Sugarloaf Carrabasset Vly ME

 

[Keeled Over]

Seen them a bunch of times in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Best one ever was camping at Porcupine Mt's - right on Superior. Lights came out and Chick and I moved our chairs right to the waters edge and had a three hour light show. I never had them on stay on that long before.

 

[Tryin']

Only once, and right here in Central Indiana. Early September 2002, IIRC. Big storm that knocked out some communications satellites and whatnot. I most vividly recall thinking that photos would have a really hard time capturing the depth of field present in the sky. It was short, and probably not very intense compared to the experiences here, but it left a lasting impression. I would love to see them again.