One of the things on our family’s “bucket list” is to someday see the Aurora Borealis – aka the “Northern Lights”.  We talk about trips to Iceland, Norway, or Alaska, but in order to see the jaw-dropping splendor of this natural phenomenon in its prime, we’d have to travel in winter to places much more frigid than the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., which my girls are not too keen on, overall.

Luckily, Mother Nature, in all her grand beauty, sometimes manages to work a little magic in the most unlikely of places.

Due to a large coronal discharge from the sun last week, the earth experienced a severe and rare G4 geomagnetic storm, which caused the Northern Lights to be visible much further south in the continental United States than normal.  Folks as far south as Alabama and even Northern California were treated to a rare sight, if they bothered to step out onto their lawns and get away from their phones, laptops, or the light pollution of their local suburbs or cities.

I had heard about the potential of seeing this grand event via the internet, and upon walking out into my own backyard last Thursday night and looking upward to investigate, lo and behold, there it was.

Now, I’m not going to say that I saw the vivid green and red streaks dancing across the horizon that is normally associated with a view of this event above the Arctic Circle, but still – unmistakenly, it was clearly visible.  In Western Maryland.  Who’d have thought?

The night sky had a perceptible pinkish glow, sometimes intertwined with hints of green.  One minute a patch would be brighter, the next – a bit softer.

I quickly gathered the girls and we stood in the yard, amazed and impressed as we gazed skyward.

We then jumped into the car and traveled a bit further north, out where I knew there were no houses and no additional light pollution to hamper the view, and we stood in the cool October air, gazing at the constellations in a star-filled sky, watching it slowly turn various hues of pink and white, with just a hint of green every few minutes.

Sometimes, a bucket list event gets checked off in the darndest of places, and it makes us want to see the Aurora Borealis in all of its grand splendor even more.

Did you get a chance to see the Northern Lights this past week?  Drop me a line in the comments below!