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Waves of colorful northern lights are expected to light up Colorado skies once again Wednesday night as severe geomagnetic storms continue, according to space weather forecasts.

Another burst of energy from the sun, known as a coronal mass ejection, is expected to reach Earth midday and remain active throughout the night, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, based in Boulder.

That wave of solar activity, which triggers the light show on the horizon, is forecast to arrive between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday, according to space weather forecasters.

Two of those energy bursts arrived Tuesday on Earth, painting the skies of Denver and beyond with red, pink, purple and green. Coloradans across the state reported being able to see the colors with their naked eye, and the effect was boosted by phone cameras.

The magnetic field of Tuesday night's storm was eight times stronger than normal and favorable to "continued activity," NOAA space forecasters said in a video update.

The energy burst expected to arrive Wednesday will likely hit the "severe" G4 category, but could reach "extreme" G5 levels, forecasters said in the video.

The five-step geomagnetic storm ranking scale predicts how the storm will impact Earth -- not just in the vibrancy of the aurora borealis, but in the potential disruption or damage to power grids and communications systems.

An extreme storm, G5, can collapse power grids, cause blackouts and disrupt satellite navigation and radio frequencies, according to the NOAA.

How bright the auroras are and how far south they are visible will depend on when the solar bursts get here and how they interact with Earth’s atmosphere. If the Wednesday night storm is as strong as Tuesday's, as forecasted, Coloradans should once again be able to see it on the horizon.

The best chance to see the aurora borealis is by getting far away from city lights and checking a light pollution map for clear spots. Then turn all gazes and cameras, with long exposure activated, north.

The final round of a powerful solar storm will hit the Earth Wednesday night, potentially offering another chance to see the northern lights.

DENVER — After a dazzling night of color across Colorado skies, space weather experts say the northern lights could make another appearance Wednesday night, though nothing is guaranteed.

“It packed a bigger punch than we would have thought,” said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder. “That's why when the chance happens like last night, people need to take the opportunity because even though we could expect it again the next night, it just may not all come together.”

Dahl said forecasters were tracking three coronal mass ejections, or CMEs — massive bursts of solar material ejected from the sun. Two of them reached Earth on Tuesday, sparking the vibrant aurora borealis display seen along the Front Range. A third CME arrived in the solar wind early Wednesday, setting up the possibility for another round.

“We went ahead and extended that G4 watch into tomorrow because we know the potential is there,” Dahl said. “But we never really know what’s going to unfold with these things.”

According to Dahl, predicting auroras is complicated. Scientists can see solar eruptions leaving the sun, but they don’t know their full impact until the energy reaches satellites about a million miles from Earth. That’s when forecasters can measure the magnetic field orientation — a crucial factor in determining whether a CME will interact with Earth’s magnetosphere or simply pass by.

“Last night, the magnetic fields came together like two magnets connecting,” Dahl explained. “That’s why it really spun up hard and we all saw it even from our rooftop here in Boulder.”

As for tonight, he said it’s worth keeping an eye on the northern sky.“It’s one of those things where you just have to keep checking,” Dahl said. “We’re at that great time of year, it gets dark early, so people might want to look around 8 p.m. to midnight and just be patient.”

He recommends watching for updates at spaceweather.gov, where real-time data shows when conditions are favorable.

Even during the sun’s 11-year solar cycle, events like this remain rare.

“During the last cycle, we never had a G5. That’s the top end of our scale,” Dahl said. “This cycle we had one last May, and last night came pretty close. But all these things have to come together, the storm has to hit Earth, and the magnetic field has to line up just right.”

That alignment, and Colorado’s long, dark nights, helped make this week’s display unusually vivid.

“Everything came together really great,” Dahl said. “We were very connected early on through the CME passage, and wow, I’ve seen some great pictures even from light-polluted areas here in Boulder and Loveland. My wife saw it from our driveway in Berthoud — the first time she’s ever seen the aurora.”

Whether it happens again tonight depends on how that third CME behaves.

“The potential is there,” Dahl said. “But it might not all come together like it did last night.”

Tips for spotting the Aurora in Colorado tonight

Here are some tips for seeking the aurora borealis Wednesday night in Colorado.

COLORADO, USA — After Tuesday night's spectacular display, there might be another chance to see the northern lights on Wednesday in Colorado.

Shawn Dahl with the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder said forecasters were tracking three coronal mass ejections, or CMEs — massive bursts of solar material ejected from the sun. Two of them reached Earth on Tuesday, sparking the vibrant aurora borealis display seen along the Front Range. A third CME arrived in the solar wind early Wednesday, setting up the possibility for another round.

Dahl said in an update Wednesday afternoon that the center has issued a warning for G3 (Strong) solar activity. That warning continues into the evening hours.

Tuesday night, the geomagnetic storm reached G4 (Severe) levels. Generally, storms at G4 levels and above bring the best chance to see northern lights in Colorado.

How bright the auroras are and how far south they will be visible also depends on how the burst interacts with Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere.

But clouds could obstruct the views for many. The 9NEWS Weather Impact Team predicts less cloud cover east of Interstate 25. So try heading east of Strasburg and Greeley for the best chance at good views.

Colorado: Tips on seeing the northern lights tonight. Again, tonight's chance is conditional.Will update as needed!#COwx pic.twitter.com/s69YCeYQTs

— Chris Bianchi (@BianchiWeather) November 12, 2025

Northern lights forecasts can be found on NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center website or an aurora forecasting app.

Consider aurora-watching in a quiet, dark area away from city lights. Experts recommend skygazing from a local or national park.

Taking a picture with a smartphone camera might also reveal hints of the aurora that aren’t visible to the naked eye.

The sun is at the maximum phase of its 11-year activity cycle, making the light displays more common and widespread. Colorful northern lights have decorated night skies in unexpected places, and space weather experts say there are more auroras still to come.

Aurora displays known as the northern and southern lights are commonly visible near the poles, where charged particles from the sun interact with Earth’s atmosphere.

Sky-gazers are spotting the lights deeper into the United States and Europe because the sun is going through a major facelift. Every 11 years, its magnetic poles swap places, causing magnetic twists and tangles along the way.

Last year, the strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades slammed Earth, producing light displays across the Northern Hemisphere. And soon afterward, a powerful solar storm dazzled sky-gazers far from the Arctic Circle when dancing lights appeared in unexpected places including Germany, the United Kingdom, New England and New York City.

The sun’s active spurt is expected to last at least through the end of this year, although when solar activity will peak won’t be known until months after the fact, according to NASA and NOAA.

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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and last updated 12:26 AM, Nov 13, 2025

Tuesday night's aurora display across Colorado was incredibly vibrant, and in some cases was even more visible than the spectacular show from May 2024 when the largest solar storm in 20 years hit Earth. While it will be hard to beat those views, you have another chance to see the northern lights tonight.

You can scroll down to see the forecast for this evening, or read through to learn about what causes auroras, how they're predicted, and why they sometimes over or underperform the forecast.

The sun has a magnetic field that sometimes gets twisted like a rubber band wound around several times. Just like that rubber band, that twisted magnetic field can snap. When it does, it releases billions of tons of tiny particles in what's called a coronal mass ejection, or CME.

If that CME is pointed toward Earth, we get hit with those particles one to three days later. As the particles crash into Earth's magnetic field, they create a geomagnetic storm.

Scientists measure these storms using two related systems. The geomagnetic storm scale, or G scale, runs from 1 to 5 and rates storms based on their impact, similar to rating a hurricane by category.

The planetary-K index, or Kp scale, runs from 1 to 9 and measures geomagnetic activity, similar to the specific wind speed measured in a hurricane's eye. Space weather experts measure the Kp index using a network of magnetometers, including at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, CO.

The G-scale corresponds to the upper ends of the Kp scale. It was designed to explain the impact of geomagnetic storms. Geomagnetic storms don't just produce auroras. They can disrupt anything with a circuit board - including radios and telecommunications, satellites, the power grid, and more. Operators of these technologies take steps to protect their devices and grids from impacts of solar storms. The G scale defines what impacts are likely to happen - thereby advising those operators what they need to do.

For Colorado to see a visible aurora, we typically need a Kp of 8 - a G4 storm, and for your phone to capture it, we need at least a Kp 7. Tuesday night's event had a Kp very close to the top of the scale.

This gets technical.

The strongest solar storms occur when the sun sends multiple CMEs toward us and they catch up to each other. In general, the speed of the particles and how many of them there are determines how strong a storm is.

The reason speed matters is due to momentum. Think about the difference between a bowling ball hitting some pins at walking speed, versus 100 mph. The faster the storm, the more it tends to disrupt the magnetic field.

Particle density also impacts intensity and how long the storm impacts last. The more particles...the longer the disruption to the field.

But nothing in space weather is straightforward. Earth's magnetic field has a polarity - the way the magnetic field points. When you hold a magnet next to another magnet, sometimes they attract and other times they repel, depending on which direction they're facing. The same is true with CMEs.

When a CME hits Earth, its polarity compared to Earth's determines whether the CME gets pulled into Earth and causes a storm, or if Earth's magnetosphere deflects it. Space weather scientists don't have an easy way to predict this ahead of time. Instead, they have to wait until the storm hits a solar observation satellite that orbits about a million miles away from Earth.

Strong storms require a perfect situation: typically multiple large and powerful CMEs, ideally catching up to each other, moving quickly, and with a polarity that aligns with Earth's magnetic field. That's why intense G-4 and G-5 storms are so rare.

When these ingredients do align, we get situations like Tuesday and tonight. Tuesday, we saw two CMEs combine. They were both (relatively) slow but had a lot of particles, and the polarity was perfect to strongly disrupt Earth's magnetosphere, creating the spectacular display many saw.

Tonight's CME is a single, much faster pulse, with some residual effects from the prior CMEs influencing the behavior of this CME.

Faster generally means stronger when it comes to geomagnetic storms, and this storm is on the extreme upper end in that sense. But the particle density is lower, so the storming may not last as long. The other wild card is the polarity. This cannot be well predicted and ultimately will be why this storm over or underperforms.

Because of the high-end potential, the Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G4 (or higher) geomagnetic storm watch that is in place for this evening.

With a Kp index of 8 or above, you can see the aurora in Colorado with the naked eye. Given the strength of this storm, you should be able to see the aurora again tonight, but clouds are likely to be more of a factor than Tuesday. Follow our evening weather forecast for the details there.

The strength of the aurora will decrease through the night, and your best chance to see it is before 10 p.m. It is unlikely to be as visible and long lasting as Tuesday's display - so using your phone camera on night mode is a good plan. Your best chance to see it is in a dark sky location free from obstacles and facing north.

The colors occur when solar particles hit our atmosphere and give extra energy to air molecules. Green and red colors are both oxygen at different altitudes. Blues and purples are nitrogen molecules. The more intense the storm and the closer you are to the aurora itself, the more intense the colors will be and the more likely you are to see multiple colors.

While the exact strength of the aurora at a specific time is very hard to predict during a storm, you should still be able to see it tonight where there are breaks in the clouds.

You can check out last night's aurora and photos here or in the viewer below.

Have a question or story idea you would like the First Alert 5 Weather team to consider? Email: [email protected]

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The sky above Mesa County glowed brilliant shades of red, orange and green Tuesday evening as charged particles from a major solar storm reached Earth’s atmosphere.

Residents from Palisade to Fruita to Glade Park captured images of the aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. Western Colorado Astronomy Club President Nancy McGuire was one of those people who witnessed and photographed the event.

“Despite being an amateur astronomer for many years, it was my first time to witness it where you could actually see the color in the sky,” McGuire said. “The human eye is not as sensitive as a camera, so very often for humans the sky might appear like a glowing white color or some white bands of light. This was a clearly visible bright red sky, like a pulsating red sky.”

According to an Associated Press report, the aurora was caused by a coronal mass ejection last week, which sends charged particles into space, some of which hit Earth’s atmosphere. Being able to see aurorae in Mesa County is unusual, McGuire said.

“In general, the sun has just passed or is in the process of passing what’s called the solar maximum,” McGuire said. “It’s a cycle that happens every 11 years. So the sun has been very active for the past couple of years, which has yielded a number of auroral displays this far south, which are pretty rare.”

McGuire said members of the Western Colorado Astronomy Club monitor announcements of solar events that could produce aurorae in our area, so they were ready to capture the event when it happened.

“Usually what happens is there’s a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection or something that happens on the sun and then within two or three days after that we get the aurora here on Earth,” McGuire said.

The show may not be over just yet. There is a chance for more aurorae to be visible in Mesa County this week, though the forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows it will be less likely than it was Tuesday evening.

“As with all nighttime sky phenomena, viewing from a dark location is important,” McGuire said. “If people are anywhere in town, like Grand Junction or Fruita, the best bet is to drive to a darker site where you have a good view of the northern horizon because that’s where the aurora will be visible and the darker sky you can get the better.”

McGuire said the phenomenon is called the Northern Lights for a reason.

“What happens when an aurora occurs, charged particles from a solar event collide with the Earth’s atmosphere and its strongest along the magnetic fields that come from the North Pole and the South Pole,” McGuire said. “Those particles follow the magnetic field of the Earth, which is strongest at the north and south polar regions.”

McGuire said anyone interested in learning more about amateur astronomy can attend the Western Colorado Astronomy Club’s monthly meetings. They are held the first Tuesday of every month, except January. They also hold public night sky viewing events during the warmer months where people can view things like planets and nebulae through club members’ telescopes.

To find out more about their meetings and events visit wcacastronomy.org.

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT

The Western Colorado Astronomy Club is currently holding an astrophotography exhibit at the Grand Junction Visitor Center at 740 Horizon Dr. through Dec. 1.

More than 53 prints have been installed featuring solar, lunar, galaxy and nebulae images by local award-winning astrophotographers, all captured from the Grand Junction area.

The project is headed by Western Colorado Astronomy Club Vice President Terry Hancock, whose astrophotography will also be on exhibit.

Hancock and several of the exhibitors will give a presentation at 2 p.m. on Nov. 24 talking about where all the images were captured in the Grand Junction area, as well as giving a guided tour of the prints by the astrophotographers and exhibitors.

“Myself and several other exhibitors are doing a presentation, which will be a show of the equipment that we use for capturing comets and deep sky images,” Hancock said. “Then a guided tour by myself and other exhibitors of the prints at the exhibit.”

After the exhibit leaves the Grand Junction Visitor Center it will move to the Grand Junction Convention Center and Avalon Theater.