A sudden, and very strong coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into the Earth's magnetosphere on Monday unleashing northern lights that were visible as far south as ALABAMA, an incredible storm to be sure. The storm was still active by the time the sun set here in Washington, however, the clear skies of the early evening were fully overcast by the time it was dark. Grr. You can almost count on that kind of thing around here. I kept an eye on the Kp indexes, which were still at 7, which meant it was still visible up there on top of the clouds.

At around 10pm I saw some signs of clearing by watching the Snohomish County Airport cam and the Harvey Field webcams, so I headed off to Mukilteo Lighthouse. I wanted to have some nice foreground to the aurora for a change and the lighhouse had a nice northern view with Everett's light dome off to the east.

It was still mostly cloudy when I got to the lighthouse, but there were brief periods of partial clearing. The green glow of the aurora could be seen between clouds far to the north, and the camera was bringing out some of the red hues that were visible over the midwest.

Finally, around midnight the skies cleared for better photos.

My photos were featured in a blog post by Scott Sistek at KOMOnews.com