Seattle could get another northern lights show Saturday night

For Western Washingtonians, Friday night was a night to go outside and gawk.

Wherever there was an open space and relatively few lights, people gathered, armed with phones and cameras, heads bent back at 90 degrees, eyes gasping at the skies above them as the aurora borealis danced and shifted and swirled above.

Pictures of the night decorated with greens and reds poured over social media — many grainy, some crisp, nearly all accompanied by text expressing awe.

It was a scene rarely seen in Western Washington, which so often obfuscates celestial phenomena with clouds stretching so far into the horizon you wonder if they ever end.

This time, for once, the skies opened up.

To the untrained, unadjusted eye, the aurora may have first looked like wispy tendrils of clouds, but if you looked long enough, you could see colors. A hint of green. Faint red hues. Take a long exposure photo and those colors would become vibrant, like what you see in magazines.

The show lasted for hours, and even Seattle’s light pollution couldn’t interrupt it.

If you missed out, you may get another chance Saturday night, and perhaps Sunday night, thanks to another series of “coronal mass ejections” — in which the sun’s atmosphere shoots out plasma and magnetic field — according to the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. When those ejections reach Earth, they can turn into geomagnetic storms, which may translate into northern lights displays.

The Space Weather Prediction Center issued a geomagnetic storm watch, saying the aurora will likely be visible over a large part of the U.S. this weekend. It’s the most extreme geomagnetic storm seen since 2003, according to the center.

As a result of the storm, NOAA noted “preliminary reports of power grid irregularities, degradation to high-frequency communications, GPS, and possibly satellite navigation.”

In the Seattle area, the forecast calls for cooperative skies Saturday night, with clouds expected to stay away.

If the aurora does show up again, go outside. Find a spot with as little light as possible and with a wide view of the sky, maybe a hill or a waterfront. Let your eyes get used to the dark. And enjoy.