The Northern Lights of Twitter

It is March 17, 2015, and a solar storm is brewing. The strongest storm since August 2005. This means one thing: for much of the Northern Hemisphere, a good chance of seeing the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis.

If you want updates on where in the world you can see the Northern Lights, you can check NOAA’s real-time aurora forecast, but the map is not very intuitive and is hard to translate into “should I go outside and look right now?” So instead, I checked Twitter.

Click here for The Northern Lights of Twitter Map with Timestamps.

Click here for The Northern Lights of Twitter Storify.

According to Twitter users, the Northern Lights are visible tonight in Ontario, Alberta, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, and Norway. (I performed the survey by monitoring the search term “northern lights” on Twitter, since it was more popular than the hashtag #NorthernLights, and cherry-picking geographically disparate locations to record. By the nature of the search I’m sure I missed many locations. Just while composing this post I have seen additional posts in Alaska, Sweden, Michigan, and Ireland.)

 

1 thought on “The Northern Lights of Twitter

  1. I enjoyed seeing this – because I didnt’ go outside to look for the lights, even tho I was up in middle of last night writing something else. So – thank you – the subject was a treat.

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