Aurora Borealis Could Make An Appearance Over Wisconsin This Week

WISCONSIN — If the weather over the Badger State cooperates, we just might get a chance to see the aurora borealis peak out from Wednesday to Friday.

The best chances for northern lights displays are Thursday, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which issued G1 (minor), G3 (strong) and G2 (moderate) solar storm watches for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, respectively. The lights could show up as far south as central Iowa.

Whether or not we see the northern lights dance depends on the skies and weather. Your chance at seeing the lights might also be aided by escaping city lights to an area such as a campground with darker skies. As many Wisconsinites likely know, areas up north tend to have the darkest skies. Over the Milwaukee area, AccuWeather calls for partly cloudy skies through most of the week at night with low chances of precipitation.

The National Weather Service Milwaukee/Sullivan forecast a 20 percent chance of showers in the Milwaukee area overnight Thursday, with thunderstorms becoming possible after 4 a.m. The forecast extends to much of southeastern Wisconsin.

As for further north, The National Weather Service forecast a chance of thunderstorms in northeast Wisconsin throughout the week beginning Wednesday afternoon. Storms would probably arrive during the afternoon and evenings, and will remain possible daily into the weekend in the greater Green Bay area, the NWS forecast.

As for what is causing our chance of seeing the northern lights, on Sunday, a plasma cloud known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, was launched from the sun. Since then, the cloud of charged gas has been heading toward Earth at a high speed and is “expected to arrive at Earth as a glancing blow” on Thursday, potentially producing aurora displays “over the far Northeast to the far upper Midwest, across portions of the north-central states, and perhaps over the northwest section of Washington state.”

Solar storms 93 million miles from Earth occur with more frequency midway through an 11-year cycle in which the sun's magnetic fields flip polarity — and that means the northern lights could dance more often in the next decade or so.

Related: Aurora Borealis Displays More Likely In Active Solar Storm Season

They are never guaranteed, of course, but aurora experts say the busy season for sunspots should peak between 2023 and 2028.

The sun's magnetic field flips polarity about once every 11 years — and we're in the middle of that process, the solar maximum, solar storm equivalent of the hurricane season, according to Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the Space Weather Prediction Center.

Related: Aurora Borealis Hunting: What’s A Kp Index, More Northern Lights Tips

"The sun has negative and positive polarity, just like Earth," Murtagh told meteorologist Jennifer Gray. "During this 11-year period, it does a reversal of the polarity. So negative becomes positive and positive becomes negative. During the middle of that process and transition, that's when those sunspots emerge. So we go through a process when we are in the middle of this transition, we get lots of sunspots and lots of space weather."

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The science behind the aurora borealis is complicated, and all many people care to know is that they're jaw-droppingly beautiful.

The aurora borealis becomes visible to the human eyes when electrons from solar storms collide with the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.

In normal circumstances, the Earth's magnetic field guides the electrons in such a way that the aurora forms two ovals approximately centered at the magnetic poles.