Northern lights visible in the skies over northern SLO County. See the photos

The northern lights made a rare appearance in the skies over San Luis Obispo County on Friday night as a powerful geomagnetic storm brought the colorful phenomenon much farther south than it’s typically seen.

Residents in dark sky locations near Santa Margarita and Creston reported seeing pinkish hues in the night sky.

But you had to be away from city lights.

San Luis Obispo residents Gabrielle Ferreira and Kyle Bell drove out to see the spectacle Friday night after hearing it was visible in Santa Margarita.

“We live on an amazing planet and when something like this happens, you have to jump in the car and go find it,” said Ferreira, who is a former Tribune reporter. “It’s really magical, and this truly feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Ferreira noted that the lights were not very visible to the naked eye at first and showed up more clearly in photos. She did note that she could see something like a “reddish light that kind of pulses.”

Meanwhile, Bell noted this was a surprise chance to do something he had wanted to do before.

“Last year I went to Iceland and hoped to see the northern lights, but due to cloud cover I never had the opportunity to see it,” he said, “and the last place I would have expected to see it was in my own backyard.”

In Hollister, weather and astronomy buff William Justo posted a sequence of photos showing a thick bank of bright pink filling the night skies over the Central Coast town.

“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” he said in a video on X. “Northern lights here in Hollister, California. ... This is usually in Alaska that we see it. It’s amazing.”

A post on X from Dann Cianca, meteorologist at KION-TV news in Salinas, showed the lights visible over Pinnacles National Park.

In more northern locales around the world, people posted dramatic photos of the colorful dancing lights.

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Center Prediction Center issued an alert for a severe geomagnetic storm that was expected to arrive late Friday or early Saturday.

It meant the northern lights — or aurora borealis — could be seen in the night sky above parts of the United States on Friday through Sunday.

“The aurora may become visible over much of the northern half of the country, and maybe as far south as Alabama to Northern California,” NOAA said.

NOAA issued a G4-level watch in advance of the solar storm, predicting a big disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field.

“Watches at this level are very rare,” said NOAA, which last issued one in 2005.

Send us your photos

Did you get any photos of the northern lights in SLO County? Send your photos to jtarica@thetribunenews.com and kleslie@thetribunenews.com and we’ll post them here.