While the prospect of storms was marginal during the first week of our storm chasing trip, we found ourselves tempted by another type of storm: the powerful magnetic storm predicted for May 10, 2024. I’d never seen the Northern Lights, and it was a bucket list item for me and for Alethea. We were pretty far south in Texas after our chase from the day before, but after looking at the cloud forecast, I figured we could get to a decent viewing spot in northern Kansas. So we drove. As we do.
I suggested an area west of Hill City in northern Kansas, anticipating few clouds and not many lights to interfere with our viewing. The viewing conditions were close to perfect. My only regret was that it didn’t get darker sooner, especially as I saw the amazing shots coming out of Europe.
Someday soon, I want to go farther north — i.e. Iceland or Norway — to see the Northern Lights in their full glory. While we could see the shape of the glows and rays and hints of color, it took long exposures with the camera to see the truly bright colors. I didn’t know the proper terminology, and what I called columns and ribbons were probably rays and arcs. Did it matter? No. The show was absolutely spectacular, and even before darkness was complete, the pink rays were visible to my naked eye.
Our first perch was a farm road in a grid we’d scouted before dark, with a gnarly old tree in the foreground. There were power lines to our south, but I figured that didn’t matter, since I fully expected all the aurora to be to our north. Wrong! The lights flowed overhead and behind us as well, with some of the best colors around 10 p.m. CDT. I removed some of the power lines later in editing so the full glory of the aurora filled the frame without those annoying distractions.
Fantastic colors manifest in the Northern Lights. This is the view looking east.
We then moved to a hill in the same area, even farther from the small settlements nearby, with no power lines in any direction (a rarity in the Plains; when I’m seeking good spots for photos, I’m always whining and joking, “Why do you need all this electricity?”). At this point the aurora was more tame, but there were still beautiful colors.
Tired, we finally booked a hotel on I-70, but we hadn’t gone far before I caught a new glow in the corner of my eye. I told Alethea I thought it was going off again, and we pulled into another farm road, facing north. There was no fancy foreground, though I loved the dirt road stretching north into the curtains of light as the aurora exploded again. My best shots from this wave were after 1 a.m. CDT on May 11, and again, the aurora stretched overhead, even producing the corona effect.
Amazing arcs of green and rays of purple, red and pink at 1:54 a.m. Alethea is the blur in the foreground with her camera.
Check out the video showing both this show and the aurora from the following night, when we took a chance and headed to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. You can see the Badlands aurora photos here — with the addition of the spectacular Milky Way.
Roll over images to see captions, or get the full experience and click one to start a slide show of larger photos.
