Northern Lights in U.S.

Get to your closest window, friends in the very upper reaches of America — because you might get a rare late-summer chance to see the northern lights. The sun, giver of light, also tossed out “a huge cloud of superheated plasma known as a coronal mass ejection (CME)” earlier this week. That doesn’t mean much for us — except that it when it smashes into our atmosphere, geomagnetic storms are the result. And those storms, as it turns out, are ideal for brilliant aurora displays.

To get a look at your odds, see this three-day forecast for aurora displays — and note how close to our northern border it gets. Fingers crossed for something great from the heavens — Minnesotans, this could be your lucky night.

Meet your guide

Diane Rommel

Diane Rommel has written for The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper and Afar, as well as The Cut, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. She once drove from London to Mongolia, via Siberia.