Seattle’s final fling with hot weather featured a celestial fireworks show on Sept. 27, in the form of an auroral display that benefited from clear skies as well as a strong geomagnetic storm.
The northern lights were pumped up by a wave of electrically charged particles thrown off by the sun a couple of days earlier — a phenomenon technically known as a coronal hole high-speed stream.
SpaceWeather.com reported that heightened auroras were spotted along the northern tier of the U.S., including Washington as well as Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.
Seattle’s auroral glow might have seemed faint to the naked eye, but long-exposure photography brought out shimmering colors.
