Will Michigan see the Northern Lights this week? What to know

LANSING – Will we see the northern lights? Or from the north?

The forecast is still unclear, but space weather forecasters say there will be chances this week for a dazzling northern lights display in Michigan, similar to the impressive sky show around May 10.

Forecasters gave stargazers in northern and Midwestern states hope for a spectacle in the sky Friday night into Saturday morning, but widespread sightings failed to materialize.

Now meteorologists have their eye on a group of sunspots responsible for the spectacular nationwide aurora display on May 10, which rotated back into view of Earth. That potentially sets the stage for another spectacle, said the federal Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Simply put, those sunspots trigger solar storms that could cause auroras here on Earth.

But the uncertainty of the outlook – and the overnight disappointment – shows that aurora forecasts can be finicky. Leading experts say it is still too early to confirm whether this week’s potential display will happen.

It will come down to two factors: Sunspots will set the conditions broadly, and if they are favorable, local cloud cover overnight will determine whether people in a particular location can see them. Because even if the northern lights are appearing, they are usually only visible when the sky is clear at night.

Viewing the display Monday or Tuesday night in the Lansing area may be difficult, said Nathan Jeruzal, meteorologist at the National Weather Service station in Grand Rapids. There should be pretty heavy cloud cover those nights, he said.

But there should be minimal cloud cover and sometimes no clouds on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, Jeruzal said.

Those are likely the best opportunities for the Greater Lansing area to see the lights, Jeruzal said.

Sky watchers have their fingers crossed

Keen sky watchers have their fingers crossed, because June 6 is a new moon, meaning the skies will be darker and any auroras that appear will be more vibrant. Shawn Dahl, senior forecaster at the Space Weather Prediction Center.

Dahl, an amateur astronomer and night sky photographer who missed the May 10 display because he was working, said he is hopeful of seeing a new display caused by sunspots.

“We have no way of knowing if a CME can occur again, but the chances of an eruption are still high in this region,” he said.

Dahl said that although the sunspot group known as Region 3697 has now rotated toward Earth, it is too early to say whether it will send another coronal mass ejection.

“We’re forecasting things from 150 million kilometers away, so it’s very difficult. And our science is limited,” Dahl said. “We can do a great job of predicting the likelihood of the flare occurring and, if so, what level it might reach, and the same with radiation storms, but we have no way of knowing whether a flare is imminent. That science “It doesn’t exist. And we also don’t have the science to know when a CME is going to explode in the sun.”

When exactly will the northern lights appear again? Conditions are set for more aurora shows in the coming years, but experts say even the best predictions can only be made accurately a few days or even hours in advance.

“There are so many uncertainties that it makes it difficult to predict,” Bill Murtagh, program coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center, told USA TODAY last year.

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