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Thousands of Confederate and Union troops on a Virginia battlefield saw what perhaps hundreds of thousands of modern-day Virginians did Friday night, but it wasn’t about pretty pictures and fun banter on social media back then.
It must have been truly soul-scraping to see the shifting colored lights of the aurora borealis in the sky on Dec. 14, 1862, appearing many hundreds of miles south of their normal abode, shimmering vividly but ominously above thousands of fallen bodies at the Battle of Fredericksburg. It’s little wonder inferences about divine meaning were so readily made from that eerie but beautiful sight in a much darker night sky nearly 162 years ago.
· Two rainy periods this week should help ease regional dryness in Southwest and Southside Virginia. See end of this column.
“An Aurora Borealis, marvelous in beauty,” Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine wrote of burying his fallen Union comrades, as retold by author and historian Sheritta Bitikofer on her Belle on the Battlefield blog. “Fiery lances of gold — all pointing and beckoning upward. Befitting scene! Who would die a nobler death, or dream of more glorious burial? Dead for their country’s honor, and lighted to burial by the meteor splendors of their Northern home!”
But, as might be expected, the Southerners saw it differently: “… the heavens were hanging out banners and streamers and setting off fireworks in honor of our victory,” renowned Civil War historian Shelby Foote wrote of the Confederate reaction, quoted by multiple online sources on this subject, including this blog focusing on the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment (also noting some fairly unimpressed Southerners).
Historical artist John Paul Strain was inspired to depict the scene of Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Confederate officers riding at the battle scene in his painting “The Northern Lights.”
Not the first, but one of the best
The aurora borealis has graced our skies before, even a handful of times at similar levels to what happened Friday, when pastel glow was seen and documented in virtually all parts of Virginia unblocked by cloud cover.
This was the third time in a little more than a year that this weekly weather column in Cardinal News featured photos of the aurora from our coverage area in Southwest and Southside Virginia. But always before, they were taken from a remote mountaintop or rural location by some of the most sky-involved among us making an extra effort most of us would not. This time, the aurora invited itself into our neighborhood and backyard skies.
Historically, you have a much better chance of seeing the aurora borealis in Virginia than you do a total solar eclipse. We are currently smack in the middle of a 108-year gap between total solar eclipses in the commonwealth, the last having happened 54 years ago in 1970, the next happening 54 years from now in 2078, and both of those totality paths only clipping the southeast corner of the state in the Hampton Roads region.
The last aurora borealis of similar magnitude over Virginia to Friday’s was 21 years ago, in 2003, particularly the night of Oct. 29 during another G5 geomagnetic storm.
Different opinions have been voiced about which was better here, the pre-Halloween aurora of 2003 or the pre-Mother’s Day aurora of 2024. But photos from a couple of well-practiced Virginia sky photographers show that the 2003 event was certainly a worthy one in our commonwealth.
More, better photos than in past
Which gets to a critical point about Friday’s aurora versus that in 2003. In just those two decades plus a year, technology increased so much that the majority of folks carry with them a smartphone that doubles as a sophisticated digital camera capable of night-exposure photos, even just aiming and shooting, which is all I did for my photos east of Roanoke. Any untrained amateur can pull in jawdropping shots of swarming colors far more intense than what one’s eye was actually seeing. And thousands of those images, not just from Virginia, but from all across Europe and North America, moved around the planet instantaneously on social media.
MySpace was not quite three months in existence during the 2003 aurora, and Facebook was still more than three months from launching. Internet message boards existed, but social media just wasn’t a thing yet.
Every tornado outbreak has a similar saturation today. Often, regular citizens minding their own business at home come up with the most compelling tornado video of the day, outshining thousands of other images and videos swarming the Internet from professional and amateur storm chasers, plus those of other people who just point their cameras to something interesting happening in the sky, often defying a local tornado warning or waiting perilously to the last minute to seek shelter. Thankfully, auroras don’t have that kind of imminent danger being photographed.
Some missed it; another chance?
Even though it was a historic aurora at our latitude, there have been plenty of people who mentioned on social media running out to a rural area as soon as they learned what was happening Friday night, and seeing nothing.
There can be any number of reasons that was the case, including that there was a pulse downward in aurora activity for a while approaching midnight on Friday once the intense burst shortly after sundown decreased, and also that what was visible to the eye was often far weaker than images on television or the Internet appeared to show. Those who hung on into the wee hours of Saturday morning, May 11, reported and documented extraordinary colors in the sky that were easily visible to the naked eye.
Friday’s spectacle plus expert forecasts based on additional coronal mass ejections of charged particles from our sun built up the expectation that those who missed Friday night could witness a similar event on Saturday or Sunday nights. There were auroras seen both nights, more in the mode of what usually happens in Virginia, a few hardy souls parking on a mountain overlook seeing some glow for a while on the northern horizon. But we should have known something that hadn’t happened in at least 21 years wouldn’t repeat itself a single night later.
The cluster of sunspots that emitted the coronal mass ejections that caused the big aurora are rotating to the far side of the sun now, firing off a huge solar flare on Tuesday that will not be focused on Earth. The cluster will rotate back around to our side in June — which will raise the inevitable question whether it’s possible something historic could, improbably, happen again in about three weeks.
Much-needed rainfall
After last week’s potential for storms proved even spottier than expected, this week is bringing a couple of different periods of fairly widespread showers, the first having affected much of our region Tuesday into Wednesday. Another arrives by Friday into Saturday.
Low-pressure systems that have generally been tracking north and west of our region, leaving us pretty dry since the latter part of winter, are at least temporarily tracking farther south, more like what we expected to see more frequently during the winter and early spring with El Niño. They are grabbing more Gulf of Mexico moisture to pull over region than most prior systems. While some thunderstorms are possible, widespread severe storms are expected to stay mainly to our south and southwest.
Weekly rain totals of 1-2 inches are expected over most of Southwest and Southside Virginia by Sunday, including whatever has already fallen Tuesday and Wednesday. That should help ease what, as of last week, had become an abnormally dry situation, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, over about two-thirds of Cardinal News’ coverage area, excluding only some locations in and near the I-77 corridor. Part of Lee County in the southwest tip had even reached moderate drought last week, though there was some rain there after the May 7 data cutoff for this map. A new U.S. Drought Monitor map is due Thursday based on data through Tuesday of this week.
Next week may bring another rain system around midweek, with warmer temperatures expected.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.