Northern lights will be visible across most of us thanks to a ‘severe’ geomagnetic storm

The northern lights are expected to put on a breathtaking show over parts of the US Sunday night due to a powerful geomagnetic storm hitting Earth.  The storm reached “severe” strength early

Sunday, strong enough to push the glowing aurora borealis farther south than usual — possibly lighting up skies from Michigan and Washington state, down to Northern California and even

Alabama, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.  “This is going to be a great night to view the lights where skies are clear,” Shawn Dahl, a coordinator at NOAA’s Space

Weather Prediction Center, told the New York Times. Clear skies are expected across much of the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, the Midwest, and parts of the mid-Atlantic and Ohio

Valley, making them prime viewing spots.  Star-gazers in the Big Apple, however, shouldn’t count on seeing much due to cloudy skies forcast basically all night. EXPLORE MORE “New York City

isn’t looking great,” Peter Mullinax of the National Weather Service told the outlet. The aurora is triggered when a burst of material from the sun, called a “coronal mass ejection,” smashes

into Earth’s magnetic field.  This specific storm is hitting hard enough to reach G4 levels, one notch below the most extreme level, experts said. Usually, the lights are only visible if

you take a trek to Iceland or Greenland. For your best shot at catching the lights, head outside the city, get away from light pollution, and face north, Dahl explained.  Even if you can’t

see the lights with your own eyes, smartphone cameras may be able to pick up the light show.  “As soon as it gets dark enough, people should be on the lookout to the north, outside of city

lights,” Dahl said. Though a full moon can diminish the visibility of the lights, “The moon is very young, so that’s not going to be a problem,” he said. The sweet spot for viewing will be

between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to forecasters. The sprawl of the lights will also be able to be tracked by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.