Update: Northern lights to glow on E. Washington horizon. Best places to watch

Annette Cary
·3 min read
The glow of the aurora borealis over the Tri-Cities was captured by Shuttha Shutthanandan near the Hills West gazebo at Richland’s Top of the World park October 2021.

Update July 11: Residents of the Tri-Cities area looking for the northern lights on July 13 likely will be disappointed.

Predictions have been revised to downgrade the amount of aural activity expected. The northern lights are likely to only be visible in Eastern Washington near the Canadian border.

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Conditions are aligning to provide a good chance to see the northern lights from the Tri-Cities, Wash., area Thursday night.

The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks forecasts “highly active auroral displays” that should be visible near the northern horizon in all of Washington, the northern half of Oregon and most of Idaho, along with more than a dozen other states.

The Geophysical Institute puts the planetary K index, which runs from 0 to 9, at a 6. According to the National Weather Service a Kp of 6 means an aurora that “will be quite bright.”

The Geophysical Institute earlier had forecast a chance to also see the aurora borealis as far south as the Tri-Cities area on Wednesday night, but has since revised the outlook for the Tri-Cities area for northern lights visible only on Thursday.

It now puts auroral activity on Wednesday at a 2 on the Kp scale.

It says the best time to see the aurora is for an hour or two both before and after midnight, with active auroral displays tending to be more diffuse and fragmented later in the night.

To increase your chance of seeing the northern lights Thursday in the Tri-Cities area you will need to find a dark spot away from light pollution, preferably at one of the higher elevations in the area.

Places to watch

During past solar storms there have been some reports of people seeing the northern lights at Jump Off Joe Butte just south of the Tri-Cities. Take Owens Road to reach the butte.

In 2021 the aurora borealis was faintly seen in the Tri-Cities from Richland’s Top of the World park behind Yokes Fresh Market in south Richland.

But Tri-Cities photographers known for getting some of the best photos of the northern lights stake out dark spots out in north Franklin County along Highway 260 and its nearby rural roads.

On some occasions in the past in the Tri-Cities area the northern lights appeared as a gray to pale green haze or cloudiness along the horizon. But time exposure photographs caught the event in brilliant color with bright greens and even a few streaks of pink and purple.

Tri-Cities area residents posting on social media about plans to see the northern lights Thursday have suggested finding dark spots north or east of the Hanford nuclear site, going to Lyons Ferry State Park or driving toward Dayton, Wash., on Highway 124 or Highway 12.

To find higher elevation places near the Tri-Cities, a topographic map of the greater Tri-Cities area is posted at bit.ly/Tri-CityElevations.

If you miss the northern lights on Thursday, there should be other chances in the next year in the Tri-Cities area.

The Associated Press reports that an 11-year solar cycle that’s expected to peak in 2024 is making the lights visible in places farther to the south than where they typically are seen in Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia.

The northern lights are caused by collisions between electrically charged particles streaming out from the sun.

As the particles in the solar winds enter Earth’s atmosphere, they collide with molecules and atoms of gas, primarily oxygen and nitrogen, according to the Geophysical Institute.

Those molecules and atoms then released energy in the form of light, creating a glow in the dark sky.