UFOs, the end of the world: Here's when the northern lights scared Evansville residents
EVANSVILLE – The northern lights’ appearance over the Evansville area broke a bit of a tradition for the city: no one freaked out about them.
Supervisors with Evansville Central Dispatch said they “surprisingly” didn’t receive any calls from concerned citizens as the lights shone over more southern locales across the planet Sunday night.
The brilliant multi-colored lights – also known as the aurora borealis – spark when gaseous particles from the Earth’s atmosphere collide with particles hurled from the sun. They’re usually only visible at the top of the world, but they leaked down as far as Indiana on Sunday.
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Several people in the Evansville area shared pictures of the lights on Ohio Valley Weather Watch’s Facebook page. They were spotted in rural areas of northern Vanderburgh County, Mount Vernon and Southern Illinois, among others. Light pollution likely snuffed them out in more populated areas.
People mostly greeted them with wonder. That hasn't always been the case.
In past appearances, the lights have caused scared residents to call the National Weather Service or Evansville newspapers, spouting fears about “burning skies” and the end of the world.
Here are a few times the aurora borealis rankled the area.
The end of the world
When the northern lights drift down to the Tri-State, the apocalypse usually comes up.
On March 7, 1918, readers flooded the Evansville Courier switchboard. Reporters and operators tried to explain what was going on, but some of the callers didn’t believe them. They had more sinister explanations on their minds.
“One man telephoned the Courier and wanted to know if it was a sign the end of the world was near,” the paper wrote.
The same thing happened on July 7, 1928. One caller even wondered if Chicago had caught fire again and Evansville residents were somehow seeing the glow of it from 300 miles away.
Modern times did little to diminish fears of the apocalypse. In 1989, when the lights beamed over Evansville and reached as far south as Texas, observers again evoked the end of days.
Bringing South America to Evansville; cutting the U.S. off from World War II
Since it’s a geomagnetic storm, the aurora borealis can wreak havoc with radio frequencies. When the lights appeared in 1960, an Evansville ham radio operator claimed he heard voices from South America – even though his radio was only supposed to pick up waves within 150 miles.
But sometimes, instead of expanding communication, the lights do the opposite.
In July 1941, with World War II raging, the northern lights cut off almost all communication in Europe. News wires and short-wave radios briefly went silent for Allied and Axis powers alike.
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UFOs
Of course, when any strange light appears in the sky, someone’s mind going to drift to the obvious: aliens.
Evansville residents usually aren’t shy about pointing out a UFO, but we’ve largely avoided doing so when the aurora borealis shows up. We’re more likely to blame “burning skies” – like a caller to police dispatch did in 1981 – or wonder if the strange glow was coming from the 1989 launch of the space shuttle Discovery, almost 900 miles away in Florida.
But UFOs and the northern lights have gone hand-in-hand since the flying-saucer craze first hit the U.S. in the 1940s. U.S. Air Force officials with Project Blue Book would often soothe UFO spotters by saying the strange lights they saw were nothing more than the aurora borealis.
In January 1967, though, they had no explanation. One night, a man in the Evansville airport’s control tower spotted two pulsating objects hovering just above the treetops. Blue in color, they shot a beam of light into the sky before vanishing altogether. He was never able to pick them up on radar.
That came only a few days after residents in Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky walked outside and found the skyline stained with a “funny green light,” the Evansville Press reported.
The northern lights eventually showed up that year – but not until months later.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Here are a few times the northern lights scared Evansville residents
