Tuesday night brought displays of the northern lights visible across much of the United States, including in North Texas.
It’s possible more northern lights are in store for the continental United States, as forecasters from the Space Weather Prediction Center said the Earth was currently experiencing impacts from the first two of three solar events.
The uptick in solar activity forced NASA to postpone the launch of Blue Origin’s new rocket on Wednesday until conditions improve.
What causes the northern lights?
D-FW Weather Wise
The sun sends more than heat and light to Earth — it sends energy and charged particles known as the solar wind. But sometimes that solar wind becomes a storm. The sun’s outer atmosphere occasionally “burps” out huge bursts of energy called coronal mass ejections. When they arrive at Earth, a geomagnetic storm can result.
The Earth’s magnetic field shields us from much of it, but particles can travel down the magnetic field lines along the north and south poles and into Earth’s atmosphere.
The Northern Lights are visible from Marshall, Texas on Nov. 11, 2025.
Richard Lane / The Dallas Morning News
When the particles interact with the gases in our atmosphere, they can produce light — blue and purple from nitrogen, green and red from oxygen.
Last year, the strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades slammed Earth, producing light displays across the Northern Hemisphere.
Will the northern lights be visible again Wednesday night?
The lights should be visible again for much of the country on Wednesday evening — from Oregon to New York — but unfortunately not as far south as Texas.
The space weather center is primarily predicting intense activity over Canada, with high chances of an aurora for the states that share a border with the country’s northern neighbor. But the southernmost edge of the view line, or the point at which forecasters expect the lights to be visible, is along the northern edge of Missouri.
Activity is expected to be even less intense Thursday evening.