Northern lights spotted across southern nevada sky by meteorologist, incredible photo shows

EXPLORE MORE A meteorologist discovered webcam footage of the northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, 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 since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center had 

forecasted a strong geomagnetic storm, SFGate reported. “I was prepared to go out and take some photos myself, but it arrived too late and I was like, ‘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 standing in Vegas. I think there was too much light pollution.” He saw the aurora borealis, which appears as beams of

light across the sky, in video captured by a Bureau of Land Management camera on Angel Peak, a recreation area in San Juan County, New Mexico, which sits at nearly 9,000 feet. The impressive

natural light show happens 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 NOAA’s scale. “It’s very likely the aurora, but keep in mind you couldn’t have asked for better conditions,” Bryan Brasher, project manager at the Space Weather

Prediction Center, told SFGate. “You’re at the 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] could get farther south than normal.” The northern lights phenomenon typically occurs in latitudes far north, over

locations like Greenland and Iceland. But during strong storms, such as the one on Friday, they can show up farther south. “The aurora is a very complex and it’s not unusual for the aurora

to appear further south than is forecast,” Brasher said. “It’s a highly complex phenomenon based on innumerable variables,” he added. “Things outside our forecast are possible.”