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.
A once-in-a-generation aurora display lit up Virginia night skies on May 10. Then, exactly five months later, it happened again.
Thursday night’s G4-level geomagnetic storm of ejected solar particles was not quite as strong as the G5 storm that occurred in May, but depending on location and timing of viewing, many Virginians who witnessed it considered the aurora show it produced just as spectacular as, if not even a little better than, the one just five months before.
Photos within and at the bottom of this article, taken by Cardinal News readers and supporters from across our Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area and slightly beyond, illustrate the vivid nature of Thursday’s aurora display. We documented the same for May’s aurora event, linked here, and also recalled a spectacular aurora show that flashed over the Battle of Fredericksburg during the Civil War.
The May 10 and Oct. 10 events mark the first times the aurora borealis has been seen this widespread and as brilliantly at Virginia’s latitude — and even farther south — in at least 21 years, since late October 2003. The aurora has been seen by those at more remote locations in the commonwealth away from city lights perhaps a half-dozen other times in 2024, including as recently as the previous weekend.
There are two independent concepts to understand why there has been a sudden excited buzz about auroras this year in Virginia and over much of the U.S. far away from the northern states that see them more regularly.
First, we are at the peak of an 11-year solar cycle when the sun has been emitting more frequent and more intense sprays of charged particles. So yes, what we’ve been seeing lately with auroras is unusual.
Secondly, the technology of digital photography and the ubiquitousness of social media have allowed these events to be captured much more easily by exponentially more people and communicated widely very quickly.
What would have, in the past, been documented well only by a small percentage of professional and advanced amateur photographers with the right equipment on precise settings is now literally at the fingertips of millions of smartphone users, their devices capable of pulling in images far better than the naked eye can detect with little or no technical knowledge or special ability. And those images can be transmitted globally with a few more keystrokes to post on social media.
“There’s more to it though than just the elevated solar activity — digital camera photography has absolutely exploded in the last 20 years,” said Peter Forister, a Charlottesville-based natural phenomenon photographer. “Now the most basic smartphone has a more advanced and sensitive camera sensor than even the best digital cameras around 2000. Also throw social media in the mix — word gets around to everybody, and it gets around fast. Now, everybody with a smartphone and vague interest in the night sky can capture aurora photos and follow updates to the second of when activity is occurring.”
Forister, a degreed meteorologist from Virginia Tech who also helps run the Explore Fall website and associated social media that track changing fall foliage nationally, was among those alerting his followers to the potential for Thursday’s major solar storm as early as Wednesday. He traveled to the open high country of the Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia for expansive views of Thursday night’s aurora uninhibited by terrain, vegetation, or light pollution.
“We’re at the peak of the solar cycle right now in late 2024 and will continue to see elevated activity for the next couple of years at least,” said Forister, who said he fell in love auroras having seen them Iceland while photographing volcanic activity and in the Northern Plains during storm chasing trips. “Additionally, this solar cycle is quite a bit stronger than the last one in the early 2010s, so it’s really the first period in over two decades that we’ve had this kind of elevated geomagnetic activity. The last time would have been 2001-2003, when there are plenty of aurora reports and pics from equally far south.”
So it is very likely aurora displays at least visible in more remote areas away from city lights will continue to recur in the remainder of 2024 and into 2025, with at least some chance of something similar to the more widely visible May and October aurora displays occurring yet again.
Enjoy the photos below, collected from those sent in by Cardinal News readers and republished by permission from social media posts. Remember that you can always send in interesting weather, nature, and sky-related photos to weather@cardinalnews.org for possible posting in a future Cardinal Weather column, and consideration for the Photo of the Week in the weekly Cardinal Weather newsletter. (Sign up for it and other emailed newsletters by linking here.)
Did a derecho make the difference at the Battle of Yorktown?
The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a three-year project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. The next installment publishes Tuesday. In it, Cardinal weather journalist Kevin Myatt writes about how the weather may have made a difference at the Battle of Yorktown. You can sign for Kevin’s weekly weather newsletter, our monthly Cardinal 250 newsletter or any of our other free newsletters below: