April 13, 2016 Auroras

Marcell, MN

A corotating interaction region ahead of a high speed stream of solar wind buffeted Earth's magnetosphere this evening, creating some auroras.  The clouds were a little bit of a problem.  I went for a run earlier in the evening, and as I was finishing, I saw a very distinct clearing line approaching from the northwest.  My optimism surged, and I thought we were in for a nice aurora viewing episode, but it soon started to snow.  I needed to go farther north to get out from underneath the clouds so up Highway 38 I drove.

There were also some clouds along the Canadian border, and if I got into the next county, I would not have visibility there, either.  I held up as soon as I saw stars overhead.

I got the camera out and took a couple shots before moving on to find the nearest lake.

Intersection of Highway 38 and north Turtle Lake Road north of Marcell.

I found Maple Lake, which was right next to Turtle Lake, but the road access looked like it might become a little tricky.  It was spring, after all, and the snow that had fallen over the past couple weeks was in various stages of melt.  The road would be muddy and maybe rutted, and I only had five inches of clearance.  I pulled in carefully, stopping first at a clearing to scout out a shot in case I couldn't make it to the lake.

Here's a plot of recently harvested trees off of Turtle Lake Road on Maple Turtle Lake Trail.

I continued carefully. My instinct at night is to move in and out of shooting locations as quietly as possible so as not to attract the attention of... I don't know. Sometimes, the boat landings are close to houses, and I don't want to wake anybody. On rare occasions, these neighborhoods are actively patrolled and monitored by its residents who are eager to stop and investigate any unexpected nighttime visitors. At this location, however, there were no nearby residents, but I always wonder if I'll find somebody camping there or just hanging out. Again, there wasn't, but if there had been, the loud, crunchy, refrozen snow on the road did not help my stealth approach. As I pulled around the final sharp curve into the boar landing parking lot, my headlights scanned across the lot to reveal that I had no company.

I parked the car and walked down to the landing's entry into Maple Lake. I found that I could walk right out onto the ice. The snow from the previous week had not yet melted here, and the ice had not even pulled back from shore. That's an advantage of north-facing landings. The trees shade the ice on the southern shore of the lake, so it's some of the last ice to melt.

As I began to shoot, I noticed an increasing coverage of mid-level clouds coming in from the west. I shot for a while until the cloud coverage became great enough that I did not want to shoot any longer, so I packed up to leave. Since I was only 100 yards away from an adjacent, west-facing landing on Turtle Lake, I decided to drive over that way and check it out. Again, the loud, crunchy snow under my tires would have awakened anybody camping there. From the west-facing landing, I could see that most of the mid-level clouds to my west had disappeared, so I went back to Maple Lake.

Now I made it onto Maple Lake.  It is interesting how much the scene has changed in one week.  The lake may now be ice-free.

I had noted some scattered low-level clouds as I left Grand Rapids, and I was hoping they would stay with the snow and not invade the clear areas farther north, but south wind were increasing and would carry the moisture with them. Normally, a few scattered wisps of cloudiness are no problem when shooting auroras, but with low-level clouds, even a one or two of them carried by strong winds is a predicament, because whenever one appears, there will soon be many. I've encountered this issue with southerly low-level jets as well as cold fronts coming in from the north.

Looking back at my camera images, I realize the auroras were brightening up just as the first l0w-level clouds were moving in.

Minutes later, the sky was completely overcast.  That ended my shooting for the night.

Yep. Sure enough. Game over. It was time to head home. I still have yet to get a really dramatic auroral substorm this year. The auroras have appeared frequently, but there have been a lot of cloudy nights, and when the skies have been clear, the auroras have tended to present themselves as the calm, steady arc. As the final image, I'd like to leave you with a 16mm wide shot.

Here's a wider angle shot (16mm lens, full frame camera).  I maybe should have focused a bit more on the paw/hoof prints.

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