The northern lights surprised New Englanders early Thursday with yet another shimmering display in the night sky as a sudden, strong geomagnetic storm projected the aurora farther south into Massachusetts and even Rhode Island.

This latest showing of the spectacular lights was the result of “some surprise and some stronger-than-anticipated (geomagnetic) activity,” said Shawn Dahl, meteorologist and service coordinator at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center,. It marks three straight nights of intense, sporadic storms that made the northern lights visible in the lower latitudes of the United States.

The aurora as seen in Western Maine at 11:34 p.m., Wednesday.Joey McGrail

Dahl said a high-speed coronal mass ejection (CME), a large stream of solar particles and magnetically charged plasma that shoots out from the sun, arrived at Earth around Sunday night, causing a few strong geomagnetic storms this week. “It pretty much all came together for a several-day stretch of mostly G1-G2 levels, with a pair of isolated, strong G3 storms as well,” Dahl said Thursday.

The view from the Mount Washington summit Wednesday night.Mount Washington Observatory

From the Mount Washington Observatory earlier this week:

The Space Weather Prediction Center’s real-time solar wind plot, below, shows the IMF (interplanetary magnetic field) intensity in Bt (strength) and Bz (orientation). “When that Bz is south (negative number), we connect well” to produce strong geomagnetic storms, according to Dahl. The yellow plot is speed.

A plot map of solar wind activity from Sept. 26 to Oct. 1, 2025.SWPC/NOAA

Although the magnetic field strength is expected to settle, there’s still a chance that the northern lights may continue tonight and over the weekend.

The “speed will likely stay elevated for a few days, allowing for a chance of substorms (brief escalations of geomagnetic activity),” according to Dahl.

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Marianne Mizera can be reached at marianne.mizera@globe.com. Follow her @MareMizera.