SEATTLE — The northern lights danced over western Washington on Sunday night, being seen across the region from the coast to the San Juans to Seattle.
A severe geomagnetic storm was observed Monday morning measuring at a G4 on a scale of one to five, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The storm occurred as a coronal mass ejection, which is an expulsion of plasma and magnetic field from the sun, passed Earth.
KING 5 viewers submitted photos of the green and purple glow lighting up the skies.
Natelee Dillinger spotted the aurora at Seabeck around 3 a.m. Her daughter, photographer Ashley Smallidge, captured one special shot of Dillinger and her granddaughter silhouetted in front of the northern lights.
“I absolutely love that photo,” Dillinger said.
Northern lights in Seabeck
Other viewers saw the northern lights in Seattle and Tacoma, where light pollution can typically drown out their glow. Doreen Muir snapped a photo of the aurora in Seattle’s Bitter Lake neighborhood at 11:20 p.m. Another viewer reported seeing them from Tacoma’s Titlow Beach and Dune Point at Point Ruston.
Further east, Blaine Deaton captured photos of purple lights from the aurora in Granite Falls.
In northern Washington, Connie Morgan saw a pink glow in Custer.
Photographer Christopher Teren also experienced quite the show from the San Juan Islands, where he saw the Perseid meteor shower in addition to the northern lights.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime shot for me!” Teren wrote in a Facebook post.
Teren said he saw a meteor streaking across the sky as he looked across Friday Harbor and Turtleback Mountain and Mount Constitution on Orcas Island. He had never captured anything like it.
The Perseid meteor shower’s peak is expected to be Aug. 11-12. The meteor shower is comprised of space debris from the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle and is considered the best meteor shower of the year.
Chances of seeing the northern lights again over the next few days diminish, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Storms are forecasted at a G0 on Monday and Tuesday nights.