Light Pillars
October 17th, 2009 at 6:00 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
There were a few comments Friday Night about lights in the sky – perhaps the Northern Lights. Downtown amid the “artificial light” and with the clouds, I didn’t see anything. The GRR National Weather Service seems to have come up with the answer to what it was. Click here for a full screen picture and their explanation. This phenomena is rarely seen when temperatures are this warm. They are most apt to occur in mid-winter, when temperatures are in the teens or lower. Here’s another article I found from a TV station in Toledo.
my thoughts exactly
Argh. Bad link there, Bill. Light pillars are unbelievably cool to see. Have one of your small army of interns fix it.
Same one I posted in the weekend wx thread – get to from http://weather.gov/grr
Bill,
You have a double Http:// in the address for the light pillar link.
Now the sun wants to play
http://www.spaceweather.com/
EARTH-DIRECTED ERUPTION: On Saturday, Oct. 17th, starting around 18:24 UT, a spotless active region in the sun’s southern hemisphere erupted, hurling a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) in the general direction of Earth. SOHO’s extreme UV telescope recorded this movie of the blast. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on Oct. 19th or 20th when the CME arrives.
I was in Bay City on Friday night and it was clear with a good display of the Northern Lights so take your pick as to if you are seeing Pillars or the Northern Lights.
SlimJim
We headed into Battle Creek from Ohio on Friday night. On 69 from about the Michigan border until Marshall we could see beautiful light pillars. Once we got to Marshall they started to faded and then changed onto I-94 and they were gone. I was lucky enough to be in the passenger seat and enjoyed the best view as they seemed to be only to the east of us.
Man, sometime when the Northern lights are visible around this area I gotta make the hubby take me to see. He works Nights MON – FRI though. So it has to be a Saturday or a Sunday…I need Bill to convince Mother Nature to co operate. LOL!!