At Long Last

First of all, before you get too excited, I didn’t get any good pictures.  Between nine months of intermittent overcast and the untended overgrowth, the Pacific Northwest is not very camera-friendly.

Months ago, I set up my phone to receive text alerts from the Geophysical Institute, and it has been dinging madly for weeks.  In addition, I was keeping an eye on the longer range forecasts, so I would have an idea of when I would be skipping a night’s sleep.

On the evening news last night, ALL THREE major networks were crowing about the recent solar activity, and for three days now, astronomers and astrophysicists have had their fifteen minutes of fame as media people were busy rooting around for a “It’s 2012!  It could be the end of the world!” angle.

At 11:30, I got this text: @Aurora_Alerts: in 33 minutes the Aurora Borealis should be at ‘STORM LEVEL! It’s On!! 6.33 Kp  http://t.co/eTmgjXyC  I grabbed my camera, tripod, compass and heavy jacket and headed north.  Harborview Park was the first place I had a good northerly view, but there was nothing visible.  Knowing that the camera can see things that I cannot, I set up a long exposure, and sure enough, there was a ghostly green near the horizon:

(The light streak at the bottom is a freighter heading to Everett.)

I looked at my compass to make sure I was looking due north, and I have never seen a compass behave that way before.  It was swinging back and forth from NE to NW, and would not settle on a bearing.

I hung out at Harborview a while, but figured this might be the only time I ever get a chance to see the Aurora, so I decided to head north in search of darker, clearer skies. As I was driving north along the I-5, it erupted. First, soft vertical lines swirling and flashing, then long sheets of light.  (Jeez.  That sounds like an acid trip…)

It was stunning and scary…  Scary because of the scale, the hugeness of the display.  It was much higher in the sky than I expected (about 40-50 degrees above the horizon), and it felt like being an insect on the floor, looking up at the bottom hem of a sheer curtain being riffled and swirled by a light summer breeze.  I dove off I-5 at 116th, but by the time I could find a dark enough place (behind Target) the show was over.

I’ll stay wired up to Aurora Alerts, and with any luck, I’ll get another chance – on a clearer, warmer night – and come away with some evidence!  😀