5 ms·
Northern lights forecasted to be visible into upper United States tonight
- gaudat 3y agoToo bad there is a full moon potentially drowning out the aurora...
- colechristensen 3y agoOr in much of the upper Midwest… a blizzard.
- hvs 3y agoWinter Storm. Blizzard has a specific meaning: In the United States, the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a severe snow storm characterized by strong winds causing blowing snow that results in low visibilities. The difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind, not the amount of snow. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have sustained winds or frequent gusts that are greater than or equal to 56 km/h (35 mph) with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 m or 0.25 mi or less and must last for a prolonged period of time—typically three hours or more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard
- pfdietz 3y agoThe storm arrived early and already was dying down before nightfall in North America.
- idatum 3y agoI expect more from NOAA getting "tonight's" and "tomorrow night's" more clearly communicated on their site using UTC. Not sure that site's graphic uses my browser locale.
- nighthawk454 3y agoIf you click their link to the 30 minute forecast data, it has times in UTC there
- mannykannot 3y agoI agree - I'm seeing a "creation time" which simply seems to be set to the current UTC time whenever I refresh it. This map seems to bear little resemblance to the 30-minute forecast for the current time, which shows very little activity.
- dheera 3y agoThe NOAA map is confusing, the webpage is titled "30 minute forecast" but it is not a forecast, nor is it 30 minutes. It shows 24 hours of history.
- defrost 3y agoIt's 24 hours of past 30 minute forecasts + one additional 30 miniute forcast (into "the future") eg: Data collected at the L1 point at 2024-03-25 02:51 (UTC) is transmitted to earth, feed into the NOAA model which creates AT 2024-03-25 03:00 (UTC) (nine minutes after the L1 observations) a forecast for 2024-03-25 03:31 (UTC) (31 minutes after "present time" when model run using data observed nine minutes earlier)
- dheera 3y agoOh. I wish they had a "forecast vs. actual" for the past 24 hours.
- chankstein38 3y agoThis was my complaint as well. I have no idea what "tonight" and "tomorrow" mean in the context of those images. The creation times help me kind of understand but it'd have been way nicer if they'd have just said "The night of 03/25/2024" or something.
- doubleg72 3y agoNot much to see here in western NY for me unfortunately..
- vl 3y agoWhat is the best time in Seattle area to see aurora tonight? Any time after nightfall?
- arcastroe 3y agoI suppose keep monitoring the 30 minute forecast page https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast
- vl 3y agoIt doesn’t look good tonight - 30 min forecast is negative, and then cloud cover is forecasted around 1 am.
- arcastroe 3y agoAh ya, I've been refreshing the 30 minute forecast and playing back the last few hours. It doesn't seem to be progressing south towards Seattle at all unfortunately. And I hadn't even thought about cloud coverage (ty!). Agree tonight's probably not the night.
- corysama 3y agoNote that according to other comments here, that page shows a playback of the Past 24 hours and a single 30 prediction into the future.
- NotSammyHagar 3y agoFrom forecasts on that page and other forecasts, it won't go far enough south to be visible.
- pushedx 3y agoGOOD LORD! What is happening in there Seymour?
- emmanueloga_ 3y agoThe Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
- voisin 3y agoYes. Can I see it? No.
- wildrhythms 3y agoSeymour! The house is on fire!
- jhalderm 3y agoDon’t worry mother, it's just the northern lights…
- Kerrick 3y agoPlease omit internet tropes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- NBJack 3y agoAppreciate the effort to keep HN in a good place, but I'm not sure the rules above apply here. While related, tropes and memes are technically distinct concepts. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2020/01/meme-trope-notion.html https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2020/01/meme-trope-notion...
- renewiltord 3y agoI'm in the air right now from Vancouver to SF and though the sky is dark since the cloud layer is blocking the city lights, I saw nothing over Washington at 25k feet and over Oregon at 33k feet. Kept eye out from 2030 to 2130 Pacific. From https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast it looks like we took off too late for the high energy phase (happened around 15 UTC to 19 UTC, which is 8 Pacific to 11 Pacific when it was sunny). I would not have seen it.
- jeleh 3y agohttps://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast Why is the "Approximate Energy Deposition" (!= visibility?) on the side facing the sun much lower than on the side facing away from the sun? Shouldn't it be about the same?
- throwway120385 3y agoIt might have something to do with the shape of Earth's magnetic field lines and the way they extend away from the sun but are compressed toward the sun. Aurora, in turn, is caused by the spiraling of charged particles that are captured in these field lines and since the field is stronger on the dark side of earth it seems reasonable that you would see more particles on the dark side. We're casting a wider net there.
- throwaway984393 3y ago[dead]