Colorado Aurora Forecast Update: Cloudy skies in the Front Range Saturday night will require eager viewers to head north to see round two!

In extremely rare fashion, Mother Nature’s incredible showing of the Northern Lights Friday night extended across nearly the entire continental United States, including a shimmering display of pink and green hues over the Denver area. If you somehow missed the exceptionally infrequent sight Friday night, you have a second chance Saturday night as severe geomagnetic storming is set to continue across planet Earth for at least one more night. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see much in the Front Range this time around due to cloud cover. However, a couple hours of interstate driving should be enough to reach clear skies in order to take in round number two Saturday night. Let’s discuss!

At a Glance:

• Super Rare Northern Lights Display: On Friday night, an exceptionally rare and stunning display of the Northern Lights extended across nearly the entire continental United States, including the Denver area. This geomagnetic storm is the strongest since at least 2003.
• Round #2 Saturday Night: There’s a second chance to witness the Northern Lights on Saturday night due to continued severe geomagnetic storming. However, cloud cover in the Front Range will likely obstruct its visibility.
• Recommendation: If you missed Friday’s display, consider heading north to or slightly past Cheyenne Saturday night, where clearer skies are expected. The mesmerizing show should be worth the drive! Remember, such opportunities are infrequent, so seize the moment if you can!

opefully you were able to get outside to see the incredible, once-in-a-lifetime display of aurora last night across the entire area. Our team gave you a solid 12 hours’ notice, so there was no excuse to have missed it!

🍥Heads up! There's a good chance to see the aurora along the northern horizon tonight in the Denver area. Looks like skies will at least partially clear out tonight. Best viewing potential is north of Denver with possibly some clouds lingering on the south/southwest Metro #COwx

— BoulderCAST Weather 🏔️❄️ (@BoulderCAST) May 10, 2024

The views were absolutely incredible, at least relative to what is possible at this low of a latitude. I’ve witnessed a lot of aurora events in my life, mostly from my time doing years of snowflake research in Greenland. While the display in Denver last night doesn’t hold a candle to a “real” aurora event in the high latitudes, it was stunning given the circumstances. Below are a few videos we took from Friday night, captured from somewhere about 20 miles north of Denver International Airport. The Northern Lights never look as vibrant to the naked eye as they do when captured by camera, but let’s forget that for a moment!

This massive geomagnetic storm slamming Earth right now has been determined to be the strongest since at least 2003. The high-energy burst of solar particles originated from a massive cluster of nearly 60 sunspots on the surface of the sun. After the sun emits the particles, it takes about 18 to 72 hours to reach Earth, depending on their ejection speed (they aren’t moving at the speed of light!).

I’ll let you in on a little secret though. Contrary to what your TV weather personalities will imply, most meteorologists know very little about space weather. It’s a completely different beast! Space weather requires a vastly different set of knowledge, forecast models and math equations to predict auroras compared to what meteorologists actually do — track tornadoes, flooding, downslope winds, and big snowstorms for Denver, in our case.

However, the general consensus from the space weather community is that last night’s event unfolded stronger than forecast. Heck, the Northern Lights were visible as far south as Key West in south Florida — maybe even further, but that’s the one report that stood out to me! The forecasted aurora view line (red line below) had the Denver Metro area too far south to see the aurora Friday night. Based on statewide reports, folks in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Trinidad, and Grand Junction all had similar glorious views to what we witnessed here. The view forecast view line was literally hundreds of miles off!

The forecast for Saturday night actually moves the view line further south than Friday’s forecast, now including Boulder and Denver! Keep in mind tonight’s activity is NOT expected to be as good as Friday night (remember Friday’s forecast was way off). Despite this, the Denver Metro area is squarely north of the view line — a glimmer of hope for folks that happened to miss out Friday night.

However, the situation isn’t that simple. We must share some bad news. Unlike Friday night which was perfectly clear, the Denver area will be socked in with clouds for basically all of Saturday night. Just take a look outside right now at 4:30PM Saturday from our Boulder webcam.

A broad upper-level low pressure is spinning near the Four Corners right now. This system will slowly move across Colorado and into Kansas over the next 24 hours. The Front Range can expect widespread cloud cover and a few raindrops through the evening and night ahead.

There are already a few showers and thunderstorms bubbling up across the Front Range, mainly over the higher terrain so far.

Typically our daytime storm clouds would fizzle off after sunset with clearing skies, but that won’t be happening tonight since there is a big Four Corners low moving in. This system will keep clouds parked over the area as weak but deep upslope flow and wrap around moisture funnel into Colorado from the east. The latest cloud cover forecast from the HRRR model is animated below from 6PM Saturday to 7AM Sunday. Notice how the Denver area will be fairly packed with clouds (white shading). However, if you can get up into Wyoming or northwest Nebraska, viewing conditions will be much better with partly to mostly clear skies expected there (black shading).

If you really want to see the aurora tonight, our team’s recommendation is to head north to Cheyenne in Wyoming, arriving around 10 or 11PM there. See what cloud conditions are like, and if still too cloudy, drive a little bit more northward (30-45 minutes). You shouldn’t have to go much further north to find clear skies. Stick around that area for a few hours and hope you catch the good stuff! If you are not willing or able to travel tonight, then by all means do take a look outside through the nighttime hours in Denver and Boulder. There could be some breaks in the clouds around, but these should be fairly minimal. The aurora is already hard enough to see in clear sky conditions — you don’t want to have to rely on small and infrequent breaks in the clouds which may never materialize or line up appropriately with the northern horizon.

Remember you may not see another display of Northern Lights like tonight’s for decades to come. It may very well be worth the few hours on the road, especially if you missed the action Friday night. Enjoy the mesmerizing show and drive safe!

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Ben Castellani

Ben grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania and holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree in Meteorology, the latter being from CU Boulder. His hometown received nearly three feet of snow from the Storm of the Century back in March of 1993, sparking his initial interest in impactful weather. Ben currently works on remote sensing and data analysis software at L3Harris Technologies in Boulder.

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