Northern Lights Visible for Up to 14 States Tonight
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Americans in multiple states may have a chance to see the northern lights on Wednesday.
According to a forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the aurora borealis could be visible in as many as 14 states tonight.
Why It Matters
While NOAA's forecast doesn't ensure a sighting, it offers a somewhat rare chance for residents of states ranging from Washington to Maine to witness the northern lights.
What To Know
According to the SWPC's viewline forecast, the aurora borealis may be visible over parts of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
The SWPC explains that the northern lights occur when electrons collide with the upper parts of Earth's atmosphere. These electrons get a boost of energy in a region of Earth's magnetic field on the night side of the planet.
Once energized, they travel along the magnetic field toward the polar areas. When they hit gases like oxygen and nitrogen high in the sky, they pass their energy to those gases, which "excites" them. As the gases calm back down, they release that energy as glowing light.
During "large" events, the aurora may be visible as far south as parts of the U.S., Europe, and Asia. In "very large" events, it can be seen even farther away from the polar regions.
In addition to clear skies, visibility depends on variables such as low light pollution and the intensity of the aurora at any given time. Even in areas within the forecast's visibility band, cloud cover or city lights could prevent a sighting.
The Space Weather Prediction Center's viewline forecast for Wednesday night.
The Space Weather Prediction Center's viewline forecast for Wednesday night.
SWPC
What People Are Saying
Space Weather Prediction Center operations chief Mike Bettwy previously told Newsweek: "General tips include viewing late at night, away from city lights, and taking pictures with your iPhone or other technology since the aurora may be visible on those devices even though the human eye may not always detect it."
The Space Weather Prediction Center says: "The aurora is not visible during daylight hours. The aurora does not need to be directly overhead but can be observed from as much as 1000 km away when the aurora is bright and if conditions are right."
What Happens Next
The SWPC issues frequent forecast updates. Anyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the aurora borealis should consult the latest outlook and head to dark, clear spots with a good view of the northern horizon.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Massive NOAA cuts could put weather forecasts in peril, lives in danger
The Trump administration's plan to dismantle the nation's atmospheric research programs could set U.S. forecasting back a generation or more, a cadre of retired federal hurricane, weather and ocean scientists warns. The budget proposed by the White House for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is almost half what it was a year ago, and eliminates all funding for the agency's Office of Atmospheric Research, the division that coordinates and conducts weather and climate research across the nation. 'It will stop all progress' in U.S. forecasting, said James Franklin, who retired in 2017 as chief of the National Hurricane Center's forecast specialists. Abolishing that research will be 'a generational loss" of any progress that would have been made over the next 10 years or more, Franklin said. 'We're going to stagnate and we're not going to continue to improve as we go forward.' The atmospheric research office, also referred to as NOAA Research, underpins much of the agency's work and scientific advances, whether it's more accurate forecasting or tracking tsunamis or plumes of chemicals, or wildfire smoke, said Franklin and others working to persuade Congress to save the programs. They say defunding the research program would carry great costs − forecast improvements have saved as much as $5 billion per storm − and put lives at risk when forecasts fall short. Dozens of private weather forecasters, TV meteorologists and scholars have expressed similar concerns on social media, broadcasts, blogs and newsletters, saying the degradation of forecast accuracy will affect farmers, aircraft pilots and passengers and millions of other Americans, whether they know it or not. The NOAA cuts, combined with other proposed cuts and a host of canceled grants and contracts across the federal government, are being viewed by many scientists and scholars as a sweeping assault on science in the United States. The White House proposed an estimated direct program budget of $3.5 billion for NOAA, roughly $2.3 billion lower than the current year, an almost 40% reduction. The 2026 line item for NOAA Research is blank, compared to an estimated $608 million in 2025. The only office under the NOAA umbrella slated to see an increase is the National Weather Service, which could see a $71 million increase to its direct program budget, with an estimated total of $1.3 billion. In a June 5 hearing on Capitol Hill, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the cuts, saying NOAA is 'transforming how we track storms and forecast weather with cutting-edge technology.' USA TODAY reached out to the Commerce Department and NOAA for comment about Lutnick's remarks to Congress, but did not receive a response. Former senior NOAA officials say transformative work will cease if the budget cuts are approved, particularly when combined with extensive cuts already made to staffing, research, grants and cooperative programs with dozens of universities. The cuts, including those by the Department of Government Efficiency and Office of Management and Budget, show little practical knowledge of how the nation's weather system operates, said Craig McLean, a former NOAA chief scientist and former assistant administrator for research. He compares the administration cuts to dismantling a car engine, then trying to put it back together without parts whose purpose you don't understand. Many of the steps taken so far reflect the recommendations of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which proposed dismantling NOAA and privatizing weather service operations, specifically targeting the agency's work on climate monitoring and climate change. Project 2025 stated NOAA's six main offices – including its divisions for research, satellites, ocean service, fisheries and marine and aviation operations – form 'a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.' In a budget document, the White House has stated that some of NOAA's research and grant programs 'spread environmental alarm." In mid-June, a team of at least half a dozen people who wrote and produced a website that supports science education and explains complicated science and weather to the public, was terminated. Agency veterans say the administration's campaign against climate research fails to acknowledge the role climate plays in daily weather, and mischaracterizes how NOAA research supports daily forecasts for all kinds of extreme weather. US military takes an abrupt turn after decades of climate change research NOAA research extends far beyond the well-documented changing climate, said Alan Gerard, who recently retired from the agency's Severe Storms Laboratory. For example, he said the cuts could "be disastrous" for improving tornado warnings. NOAA Research's network of nine laboratories, 16 cooperative institutes and other partnerships with universities collect and share weather data, then use it to develop new forecast models, new tools and better techniques to save lives, Gerard said. The division's work is credited with modeling and forecasting advances that support both the hurricane center and the weather service, including vast improvements in forecasting hurricane track and intensity. John Cortinas, a former deputy assistant administrator for science with NOAA's Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, cited a list of forecast-improvement projects now underway. For example, the storms laboratory is developing 'the next generation of radars,' to improve tornado forecasting, Cortinas said. 'But if the White House cuts go as proposed, that lab's gone, that ends.' The Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory is working on the next generation of offshore buoys. The Global Systems Laboratory developed a national weather forecast model and conducts fire-weather and wildfire research. Cortinas said it's now working to improve the prediction of hyperlocal extreme rainfall events like those that caused massive flooding last summer in Minnesota and earlier this year in Kentucky. Several projects are rooted in the Weather Research and Forecast Innovation Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump during the early days of his first term in 2017. A Congressional Research Service report released on June 10 noted NOAA has not publicly released details on the proposed budget, and stated the available documents do not discuss how NOAA plans to meet the responsibilities it has been assigned. Franklin started his 35-year career at NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory, which includes the Hurricane Research Division. He has spoken often about strides being made to improve forecasting and voiced frustration over hurdles that still exist in forecasting hurricane intensity. Over the past decade, NOAA has shaved the margin of forecast track error by 27% at 36 hours out and 18% at 72 hours out. In 2024, the hurricane center set a record for the most accurate forecasts in its history, according to a preliminary analysis by the center and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University. 'The 5-day forecast of hurricane track is as accurate as the 3-day forecast was 20 years ago,' Rick Spinrad, NOAA's former administrator, told USA TODAY. Franklin fears the budget cuts would jeopardize those improvements. For example, he points to weather balloon launches that have been restricted or discontinued at some weather service offices. The offices are grappling with staffing shortages after the administration fired some probationary employees and offered incentive-based retirements to shrink the size of the federal bureaucracy. It may be hard to conceive that data collected from balloons launched in the Great Plains could affect hurricane forecasts on the East or Gulf coasts, but they can and do, said both Franklin and Gerard. The launches provide crucial information about moisture and prevailing winds in large systems crossing the country that could steer or interact with approaching tropical systems, Franklin said. 'If they pass through an area with less balloon coverage, the forecast might change a bit and get degraded." The larger the area with missing data, he said, the greater the risk of error in a hurricane landfall forecast. Franklin and others cited a 2024 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that found NOAA's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program has saved roughly $5 billion per hurricane per year in terms of pre-landfall protective spending and post-landfall damages and recovery. "Hurricane response costs become greater when you have a poorer forecast,' he said. 'That's a lot of cost savings that we seem willing to give up here. We're going to turn off all that potential savings by saying we don't care if the forecasts don't continue to get better.' Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change, hurricanes and disasters for USA TODAY. Reach her at dpulver@ or dinahvp.77 on Signal. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Massive NOAA cuts could put forecasts in peril, lives in danger
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
With hurricane season brewing, Pentagon stops sharing satellite weather data
The Defense Department is cutting off weather forecasters from data gathered by its special satellites that can "see" through the clouds, a move experts say could deprive hurricane researchers of key information as hurricane season kicks into gear. "It's just going to make researchers have to work even harder to get to the results," said Jill Trepanier, a hurricane climatologist and chair of Louisiana State University's department of geography and anthropology. The "permanent" cutoff puts a stop to the distribution of all data collected by three military-run satellites, according to a notice release by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association on June 25. The Pentagon first announced that data cutoff would go into effect on June 30, but later pushed the date back to July 31. The satellites are equipped with unique tools to peer beneath cloud cover and capture microwave images that forecasters can't get anywhere else. Their infrared sensors capture images over an area of 1,600 nautical miles, beaming down information twice every day. Launched between 2003 and 2009, the satellites orbit Earth every 101 minutes at around 515 miles above the ground, according to NASA. They track weather patterns over remote areas, including "fog, severe thunderstorms, dust and sandstorms, and tropical cyclones," according to the Space Force. The Navy confirmed the data cutoff, adding that the satellite program was already "scheduled for discontinuation in September 2026." The Space Force referred questions to the Navy, which it said was responsible for the change. More: Massive NOAA cuts could put weather forecasts in peril, lives in danger Even as the Navy "is making a change on their end, the posture on sharing DMSP [Defense Meteorological Satellite Program] data has not changed," the Space Force said in a statement. The satellites and instruments "are still functional," and Defense Department users "will continue to receive and operationally use" data from them. Hurricane experts have already raised alarms about the impact the Trump administration's slashing of science budgets could have on hurricane research. As tropical areas brace for incoming storms, the satellite data cutoff exacerbate the problem, they say. Hurricane season begins in June and ends on the last day of November. "We're back to tracking hurricanes like it's 1999. Except this isn't a party. And people could die," John Morales, a three-decade TV meteorologist specializing in hurricanes, wrote in an NBC op-ed. The military satellites "provide critical information that regular weather satellites can't," he wrote. The change will "severely impede and degrade hurricane forecasts for this season and beyond, affecting tens of millions of Americans who live along its hurricane-prone shorelines," Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist and storm surge expert, wrote in a Substack article. The three military-run satellites provide roughly half of microwave satellite scans to forecasters, Lowry wrote. Trepanier said data from the satellites helps to track "rapid intensification" of hurricanes and to "see the structure as the storm is forming," which currently represents "probably the weakest puzzle piece" in the process of modeling hurricanes. "The biggest threat" was the suddenness of the shutdown, which left researchers "reeling," Trepanier said. "It's frustrating when you have something that's available that could make it easier" for researchers to focus on "other aspects of that storm's trajectory," she added. Forecasters have warned that Flossie, which strengthened to become a tropical storm on June 29, could become a hurricane within days. The storm was around 155 miles southwest of Zihuatanejo, on Mexico's Pacific coastline, on June 30 and is expected to pass off the Baja California Peninsula this week. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pentagon stops sharing satellite weather data amid hurricane season
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
With hurricane season brewing, Pentagon stops sharing satellite weather data
Hurricane experts have already raised alarms about the effect the Trump administration's slashing of science budgets could have on hurricane research. The Defense Department is cutting off weather forecasters from data gathered by its special satellites that can "see" through the clouds, a move experts say could deprive hurricane researchers of key information as hurricane season kicks into gear. "It's just going to make researchers have to work even harder to get to the results," said Jill Trepanier, a hurricane climatologist and chair of Louisiana State University's department of geography and anthropology. The "permanent" cutoff puts a stop to the distribution of all data collected by three military-run satellites, according to a notice release by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association on June 25. The Pentagon first announced that data cutoff would go into effect on June 30, but later pushed the date back to July 31. The satellites are equipped with unique tools to peer beneath cloud cover and capture microwave images that forecasters can't get anywhere else. Their infrared sensors capture images over an area of 1,600 nautical miles, beaming down information twice every day. Launched between 2003 and 2009, the satellites orbit Earth every 101 minutes at around 515 miles above the ground, according to NASA. They track weather patterns over remote areas, including "fog, severe thunderstorms, dust and sandstorms, and tropical cyclones," according to the Space Force. The Navy confirmed the data cutoff, adding that the satellite program was already "scheduled for discontinuation in September 2026." The Space Force referred questions to the Navy, which it said was responsible for the change. More: Massive NOAA cuts could put weather forecasts in peril, lives in danger Even as the Navy "is making a change on their end, the posture on sharing DMSP [Defense Meteorological Satellite Program] data has not changed," the Space Force said in a statement. The satellites and instruments "are still functional," and Defense Department users "will continue to receive and operationally use" data from them. 'People could die' Hurricane experts have already raised alarms about the impact the Trump administration's slashing of science budgets could have on hurricane research. As tropical areas brace for incoming storms, the satellite data cutoff exacerbate the problem, they say. Hurricane season begins in June and ends on the last day of November. "We're back to tracking hurricanes like it's 1999. Except this isn't a party. And people could die," John Morales, a three-decade TV meteorologist specializing in hurricanes, wrote in an NBC op-ed. The military satellites "provide critical information that regular weather satellites can't," he wrote. The change will "severely impede and degrade hurricane forecasts for this season and beyond, affecting tens of millions of Americans who live along its hurricane-prone shorelines," Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist and storm surge expert, wrote in a Substack article. The three military-run satellites provide roughly half of microwave satellite scans to forecasters, Lowry wrote. Trepanier said data from the satellites helps to track "rapid intensification" of hurricanes and to "see the structure as the storm is forming," which currently represents "probably the weakest puzzle piece" in the process of modeling hurricanes. "The biggest threat" was the suddenness of the shutdown, which left researchers "reeling," Trepanier said. "It's frustrating when you have something that's available that could make it easier" for researchers to focus on "other aspects of that storm's trajectory," she added. Forecasters have warned that Flossie, which strengthened to become a tropical storm on June 29, could become a hurricane within days. The storm was around 155 miles southwest of Zihuatanejo, on Mexico's Pacific coastline, on June 30 and is expected to pass off the Baja California Peninsula this week.
