The Northern Lights may shine again across Canada tonight

After nights of bright auroras shining in the sky, a blustery solar wind stream may spark even more displays of the Northern Lights across Canada.

Check your weather forecast for clear skies tonight. Both NOAA SWPC and the Canadian Space Weather Forecast Centre are reporting possible active to stormy conditions throughout the night, and that means we may see more of the Aurora Borealis lighting up our skies.

As of Wednesday afternoon, SWPC is forecasting a G2 (moderate) geomagnetic storm late in the day, due to Earth plunging into a fast stream of the solar wind.

READ MORE: What is space weather and what are geomagnetic storms?

Based on SWPC’s forecast, the geomagnetic storm is timed to occur during the early evening, from 21-00 UTC on Wednesday, or between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. EDT (6-9 p.m. ADT, 6:30-9:30 p.m. NDT). That would make any resulting auroras best seen from the eastern half of the country, after sunset. They expect conditions to settle down afterwards. However, there could be some brief bursts of aurora activity (aka ‘substorms’) during the rest of the night.

While geomagnetic storms typically last at least three hours, substorms are periods of aurora activity that can rival storm levels in their intensity and how far south they reach, but which only last for a short time.

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The Canadian Space Weather Forecast Centre outlook is a bit more optimistic. They are expecting stormy conditions (between G1-G3 geomagnetic storm) to begin at roughly the same time as the SWPC forecast indicates, but also persisting throughout the night.