What it was like to watch the northern lights dance across the Midwestern sky

Streaks of green and pink light filled the sky Friday night, from one horizon to the other.

How could I go to bed?

“It’s hard to leave,” my sister and I agreed, and so we stood marveling at the massive spectacle from a lakeside park in northwest Wisconsin as night turned to morning.

Like so many other sky watchers at that moment, we had been losing track of time as we stretched our necks upward to witness the columns and swirls of light slowly brighten and fade, moving in a slow dance.

A few others stood in the tiny park near us, basking in the beauty, too. Forecasters had let the world know that the strongest solar storm in two decades was poised to send this spectacular display to an unusually wide swath of the planet.

As a longtime aurora fan, I had been skeptical; northern lights are elusive and such hype often doesn’t result in a show.

But as darkness worked its way west across the hemisphere and social media posts blew up with jaw-dropping images first from Europe and later from the East Coast, I grew more optimistic. Soon, people were cheering the northern lights as far south as Florida and in light-polluted cities including downtown Minneapolis.

In our corner of the planet, the glow typically appears small and low on the horizon. Often, it shows only in the wee hours of school nights. Clouds, city lights or even a full moon can obscure the view.

But on Friday night, everything fell into place.

The good news is that the sun’s cycle is hitting its peak, and the northern lights will continue to appear more frequently this year. And with better tools for forecasting exactly when solar particles will smash into Earth’s magnetic field, we all may get to experience the beauty again soon if we’re lucky.

Friday’s display was not the most colorful or lively that I’ve seen. But standing nearly solo in the darkness of rural Wisconsin felt like a communal experience, our divisions hidden by the awe-inspiring phenomenon that humans have honored for generations.

“We may not see this again,” I said to my sister, “covering the whole sky like this.”

So, like sky watchers across the planet, we lingered a little longer as the aurora surrounded the world in a giant embrace.