No luck for northern lights in the East as the West gets front row
The forecast is calling for a strong G3 geomagnetic storm, expected to register a Kp index of 7. Because of the unfavourable weather forecast in the East, Western Canada will have the best seat for the northern lights early Thursday morning.
Western Canada is going to get treated to a light show early Thursday morning, thanks to recent sunspot activity.
Spots on the sun released solar flares off its surface, sending coronal mass ejections (CME) hurdling towards Earth at speeds of more than 800 kilometres per second.
Not one, but two CMEs will interact with the Earth's magnetic fields. Those particles will converge at the North Pole. As a result, those colliding particles wil emit light, otherwise known as the aurora borealis or the northern lights.
The forecast is calling for a strong G3 geomagnetic storm, expected to register a Kp index of 7. Technically, this means you should be able to view the northern lights as far south as Washington state, Toronto, Ont., and parts of Atlantic Canada, but that won't be the case for these regions, however.
There's a lot of cloud cover in the forecast in Eastern Canada for the pre-dawn hours Thursday morning, leaving only the Prairies and parts of B.C. able to get a viewing of the northern lights, according to Tyler Hamilton, a meteorologist at The Weather Network.
Watch the video above to see why Western Canada will get a front-row seat to the northern lights this week.
Thumbnail courtesy of Joe Gilker.
