meeting with students soon. No word on when that meeting might happen. Okay Did you see this? Such a spectacular light show in the sky last night. The northern lights shining over California. Something we don't normally see here. Meteorologist Rob Mayeda took these pictures, believe it or not, from Danville. And you can see the blue and purple lights hovering about houses. I know Rob is joining us now to explain how this phenomenon works. And Rob a lot of people wondering. I missed it last night. Can I see it again tonight? I'd be the first to admit I did not expect to see those colors last night. You know, Northern California Bay Area as far south as we are. Sometimes you might see just a little bit of red in the sky. We have that at times. But as things flared up, that was the view over Danville captured on a ten second exposure on a camera or a smartphone, which gathers up more light. Now, speaking of those colors we had in the sky, this is that upper energy that hits the Earth's upper atmosphere, reacting with nitrogen and oxygen molecules. And depending on where that is in the atmosphere, you do get those different colors. Usually when an aurora is set up far away, you see the red on the horizon. But with the southern extent of the aurora down and even Southern California, you did get to see all those colors last night. The red, the blue, the green and the pink. So how do we set up tonight? Last night it was a G5 level storm. Right now the official forecast from the Space Weather Prediction Center is a G4, which means as far south as Northern California is a possibility again tonight the levels have dropped off to start, but after midnight tonight, there will be that window of opportunity where we just might see more of those northern lights not so far to the north, but the weather might get in the way. As you see, we got some low clouds spreading across the bay, leading to some cooling temperatures taking the edge off that summer-like heat we've been experiencing inland over the last couple of days. We'll talk more about this cooling trend heading our way to wrap up the weekend and the hour by hour Aurora viewing forecast coming up in about ten minutes. Wow. Amazing Rob, let's do it again I know, did you catch it, Terry I did not I'm going to be out tonight though I guarantee you that viewers they have been sending us pictures of the solar storm they caught it from all across the Bay Area. To see more, go to our website site nbcbayarea.com. You can use your phone
