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(meteorobs) A BRIGHT AURORA ON THURSDAY EVENING!



    Sky watchers in Westchester County, N.Y. got an unexpected sky show on 
Thursday evening: a view of the aurora borealis.  So bright was this aurora, 
that it was visible even from a brightly-lit parking lot in Yonkers, NY!

    On Wednesday night, I prepared an animated graphic for my evening 
weathercast showing how the crescent Moon would interact with Mars, Jupiter 
and Saturn during the next couple of evenings.  I told viewers that the best 
time to look would be " . . . on Thursday evening, as soon as it gets 
sufficiently dark -- around 8:15 p.m."

    Although I was aware of the alert issued on SpaceWeather.com concerning 
an interplanetary solar shock wave striking Earth on Thursday afternoon, I 
didn't mention anything about it on my Thursday weathercast because of 
several false alarms in recent weeks.  I did, however, remind everybody about 
looking for the the Moon and planets.

    At 8:15 p.m., I was out in the brightly-lit parking lot of News 12 
Westchester with cameraman Barry Gerber taking a shot of the Moon and planets 
for our 10:00 Night Edition show, when I took a glance overhead and saw a 
distinct glow about 15 to 20 degrees in diameter, shining with a 
beet-red-type hue.  I suspected that this might be an aurora, but because of 
the surrounding lights I could not really be sure.  I called my wife at our 
home in Levittown, Long Island and asked her to go into our backyard and tell 
me if she saw anything unusual.  About 30 seconds later she returned 
excitedly saying that there was a "crimson red glow high in the southern sky 
and nearly overhead."  

    A few minutes later, Barry and I were in one of the News 12 vans, heading 
into the nearby Lenoir Nature Preserve where we had access to darker skies.  
From there, I could see much of Orion and Taurus enveloped in a deep-red 
aurora.  We stayed until 8:45 p.m. EDT, as the ruddy auroral glow began to 
rapidly fade out.  We also saw a few narrow white rays moving rapidly across 
Orion from west-to-east.

    Upon returning back to the television station, our assignment desk had 
received more than a half-dozen phone calls in quick succession between 8:15 
and 8:30 p.m., all inquirying about " . . . that weird red glow."  Most of 
the calls were from rural northern Westchester which is significantly less 
light-polluted than the more urbanized southern part.  It is obvious that 
many of these folks were probably drawn outside by their wanting to see the 
Moon and three planets and in the process got a chance to see another kind of 
celestial display! 

    Although auroral activity never revived during the overnight, as I drove 
back home to Long Island later that night, I noticed the inability of being 
able to hear any distant radio stations on my car radio.  Signals that would 
normally "boom-in" under the cover of darkness (such as WBZ in Boston, WGY in 
Schnectady and WHAS in Louisville, KY) were either faint to completely 
inaudible, indicating that there were some sort of significant atmospheric 
disturbance churning up the ionic sea above.
 
    According to the NOAA Space Environment Center's Space Weather Office, 
the magnetic K-Index attained a level of 8 on a 0-9 scale from 21:00 UT on 
April 6 to 03:00 UT on April 7.  This corresponded to 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. EDT 
on the evening of April 6.  Typically, a K index of 6 suggests the 
possibility of sighting an aurora as far south as the latitude of New York 
City.  According to SpaceWeather.com, last night's display was reported as 
far south as North Carolina!

-- joe rao 
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