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January 29, 2022 Auroras (Barely)

Wabana Lake

I spent a bit of time into the evening getting some things finished at work, and I ended up missing a nice period of southward Bz in the early evening. When I finished my work and checked the Great Lakes Aurora Hunters page on Facebook, I saw a nice picture of a semi-decent display of the auroras on the northern horizon, taken from Grand Marais, Minnesota. Upon seeing this, I hurried through dinner and got set to head out. My usual route takes me past McKinney Lake on the north side of Grand Rapids, where I get the first look, as I drive by, to see if there is an auroral arc on the horizon. If there is nothing there, I usually drive up to Prairie Lake, where it is a bit darker. If I see something, I go somewhere else where I've chosen to shoot. This time, I saw nothing, so it was onward to Prairie Lake. By the time I got there at around 9:30 PM, a layer of high clouds had moved in, and the auroras had mostly dimmed. Bz was now neutral, but it was fluctuating between neutral and south.

I had checked the satellite picture before I left home, and the high, thin overcast would be coming and going over the next several hours. I decided to drive up to Wabana Lake to check out one of my favorite late winter and early spring shooting locations and hope for a break in the clouds. By the time the clouds cleared, the remnants of the auroral arc had dimmed to just a slight glow. In the meantime, I was looking at all sorts of light displays in the clouds to my north.

It's hard to pick out what might be an auroral glow, what's city haze, and what's a reflection of city lights on the undersides of the clouds. I have annotated a picture below to illustrate this. I'm not sure whether or not there is a new light source in northern Itasca County, but for the first time, I saw a pretty good reflection of the lights somewhere north-northwest of me. I had seen International Falls' reflection and glare before, and I could see it pretty clearly this evening, too. The area to my northwest was new. It could be Bigfork, Marcell, or some combination of the two. Most likely, it is Bigfork.

Once I saw that there were no significant auroras, and the clouds were thickening again, I headed home.

Nice Auroras
Sources of the various patches of light in this picture are labelled below each light patch.
Nice Auroras
Sources of the various patches of light in this picture are labelled below each light patch.
Nice Auroras
The brightest auroral glow I saw.

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