“Strong” northern lights show looking more likely for Thursday night into Friday night

Northern lights, aka the aurora borealis, are caused when an “explosion” on the sun, called a Coronal Mass Ejection spews a plasma mass out into space at speeds close to two million miles per hour. These Coronal Mass Ejections occur frequently on the sun, but only effect us when they are facing us and the plasma mass comes towards earth. The size of the ejection and the amount of plasma directed towards earth determines how big the northern lights show will be and how far south it can be viewed. It usually only takes one decent sized, Earth directed ejection to give us a show of northern lights.

So what happens when the energy from three ejections reach Earth at the same time? You get a LOT of excited night sky watchers, that’s what happens.

And that is exactly what has happened over the last 24 hours. There have actually been four Coronal Mass Ejections directed at Earth but as of now, the first will arrive on it’s own. The excitement comes from the 2nd 3rd and 4th.

The 2nd and 3rd occurred in close proximity of each other and the 4th occurred with such force that it is forecasted to “catch up” to the 2nd and 3rd as they all impact Earth at about the same time.

All this comes down to a G3 aurora storm with a Kp index of 7 sometime Thursday night through Friday night. According to NOAA, a Kp 7 storm will be visible into Illinois. Aurora storms are forecasted in five levels ranging from G1-G5. A G3 storm is listed as “strong” on the scale.

It’s not known exactly at this time when this mass of energy will arrive, but Fond du Lac County residents in a dark area will likely see the northern lights if it arrives Thursday night, as skies are forecasted to be partly cloudy at that time.

Stay tuned to KFIZ.com for updates as things become more clear how this solar storm will pan out.