The Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, were to be spectacular September 30 to October 4. We check the Aurora forecast generated by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the forecast for these five days is the best we've seen.
Days with KP=4 have an average chance of seeing the Lights. Days with KP=5 or greater have a strong chance of seeing the Lights. (KP is defined below.). Here is a section of the forecast copied from the Institute's site:
BB and I have been looking for nearby places to view the Lights since we arrived in Anchorage. We ask people where they go to view the Lights. We attended a program on the Northern Lights at the Planetarium at the University of Alaska Anchorage. We talked about what to wear to stay warm while viewing the Lights. We did everything we knew to do to get ready. The one thing we couldn't do was control the weather.
It has been raining here...a lot. Raining enough to set records. Rainfall as of end of September put this as one of the 15 wettest years on record. The rain and clouds kept us from viewing the Lights.
Click here for what we hope to see.
We still have time, but oh how I wish the past few nights had been clear.
Sal
From the Institute's FAQs:
The Kp number is a system of measuring aurora strength. The range goes from 0 to 9 (0 being calm, 1 very weak, all the way up to 9, which would represent a major geomagnetic storm with strong auroras visible). Anything Kp 5 and above is classified as a geomagnetic storm.
The Kp-index was introduced by a German scientist named Julius Bartels in 1939. The abbreviation Kp comes from the German "Kennziffer Planetarische," which translates loosely as “planetary index number,” although it is better known in English as simply the planetary index, and is usually designated as Kp [number from 0 – 9].
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