Aurora Ping!..................
I saw a spectacular aurora display in Canada back in the spring of 2001 that was one for the ages. It covered nearly the entire sky, and I had to look SOUTH to see the brightest shimmering curtains in the clear sky above.
The Northern Lights
Have seen queer sights
But the queerest they ever did see
Was the night on the marge
of Lake LaBarge
When I cremated Sam McGee
Of course it is supposed to rain here tonight.
Cloudy and snowing here tonight. I think the dang astronomers did it deliberately.
Let's hope it will dawn on them.
IIRC it was in 1982 when they were visible in some areas as far south as the 36th parallel.
Being in Maine or NH all my life I’ve seen a few. In a pretty dark sky area now. One, many years ago, was really spectacular - lit up the whole sky with green and red.
Back in the ‘70s my college buddy and I were driving across Canada, pretty much non-stop. Somewhere in Alberta on the trans-Canada highway I was driving and saw an absolutely gorgeous aurora. Pulled the car over and woke my buddy up. Got out of the car and nothing. I was hallucinating. Time to switch drivers.
We see them in Western NY one Sunday night after church in the ‘60s. It was so odd; we didn’t have a clue what was going on.
You want nightmares start looking up CME’s and how often major ones have happened in the past.
In early 1969 I was on an Indian reservation about 150 miles north of Edmonton. It was about 10 pm and about 20 below zero (kind of warm for that time of year). As we were driving back to our apartment in Lac La Biche, we could see the Northern Lights above us. The local Indians had told us if we stopped and whistled toward the lights they would come down to us.
To test their claim we stopped got out of the car and whistled. Danged if the lights actually did descend toward us. That experience remains one of my top 5 natural wonders life experiences. The best I can describe the lights would be as moving shower curtains, folding over themselves, in red, purple, blue, white and green cascading up and down as they moved laterally. It appeared those curtains descended until they were only 100 or so feet above us. I could actually hear the lights moving. I speculate what I heard was ice crystals colliding in the air, the sound was an icy “swoosh” as if a plastic curtain was being dragged across a floor. Absolutely stunning!