A meteorologist discovered webcam footage of the Northern Lights, also known as the Northern Lights, over southern Nevada early Friday morning.
Matthew Woods, who works at the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas, made sure to check webcams for the sighting, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center had predicted a strong geomagnetic storm. , SFGate reported.
“I was prepared to go out and take some photos myself, but it was too late and I thought, ‘I have to go to work in the morning,’” he told the outlet. “I don’t think you would have seen it if you were in Las Vegas. “I think there was too much light pollution.”
He saw the northern lights, which appear as rays of light in the sky, in a video captured by a Bureau of Land Management camera at Angel Peak, a recreational area in San Juan County, New Mexico, which is located almost 9,000 feet.
The stunning natural light show occurs when particles from the sun hit Earth’s upper atmosphere at up to 45 million miles per hour, according to Space.com. The geomagnetic storm that occurred on Friday was a level 3 out of 5 on the NOAA scale.
“It’s very likely the aurora, but keep in mind I couldn’t have asked for better conditions,” Bryan Brasher, project manager at the Space Weather Prediction Center, told SFGate.
“You’re on top of a big mountain,” Brasher explained. “The higher you are, the further north you can see. You had ideal viewing conditions, combined with the fact that we had conditions in the forecast that things [the aurora] “It could go further south than normal.”
The northern lights phenomenon usually occurs in very northern latitudes, in places like Greenland and Iceland. But during strong storms, like Friday’s, they can appear further south.
“The aurora is very complex and it is not unusual for it to appear further south than expected,” Brasher said.
“It is a very complex phenomenon based on countless variables,” he added. “Things may happen outside of our expectations.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn