The Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, have been described as stunning, mysterious and breathtaking.
They are typically something you only see up in Canada and Alaska, but Coloradans have been getting an opportunity to see them over the last couple of months. And we could get another colorful light show Thursday.
It all has to do with an expected solar storm, which could give northern states a rare glimpse of the Aurora Borealis. Northern Lights occur when a magnetic solar wind slams into the Earth's magnetic field and causes atoms in the upper atmosphere to glow. The lights appear suddenly, and the intensity varies. They can take on the colors of green, white, yellow and in rare cases, pink.
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The northern lights explained and why you can see them in Colorado
Right now, there's a possibility in the forecast as far south as Cheyenne, Wyoming, but forecasters at the Space Weather Center in Boulder said that's not to say they can't be seen in Colorado.
"We started seeing a lot of sunspot activity in the last 6 to 10 months or so, back in March and April we had eruptions that produced Auroras visible in Colorado," Bill Murtagh with the National Weather Service's Space Prediction Center in Boulder said. "Expect to see more of that."
Murtagh also said you can expect the high solar activity to continue into the next couple of years as that activity reaches it solar maximum.
