The Northern Lights Are Set To Shine On Valentine’s Day

If you’re anything like us city-dwellers, the first you see and hear of the northern lights shining in British skies is on social media. Luckily, here’s some forewarning: the Met Office is forecasting a solar storm over the next few days, meaning beautiful auroras could flash across the sky in parts of northern Europe and North America.

Met Office Forecasts Romantic Northern Lights

‘Northern regions have further chances to see the aurora over the next few nights,’ the Met Office wrote on X (Twitter) on Tuesday morning. ‘Cloudy skies mean limited viewing opportunities for most of us, but with clearer skies in northern and western Scotland, there’s a much better chance here.’

This means green and pink hues may well streak across the sky on Valentine’s Day – though this is much more likely if you’re based in northern Scotland. Across the Atlantic, aurora is also expected to shine over North America and Greenland.

How Does The Met Office Predict The Northern Lights?

The northern lights aren’t like most weather phenomena, which move in cycles and streams through our atmosphere. Aurora is a solar storm (aka a radiation storm) which forms when charged particles from the sun interact with our magnetic field and atmosphere, refracting light into a range of colours (some not perceptible with the naked eye, some masked by clouds, and others too subtle to outshine the moon – and with the full moon gradually waning, the latter may prove a barrier this week).

‘Space weather forecasting chiefly uses satellites to monitor the Sun’s activity and forecast events that could reach the Earth,’ the Met Office explains. ‘In order to understand the interaction with the Earth’s surface, there’s a global neutron monitoring network in operation.’ The UK Met Office is part of this monitoring network, contributing to global monitoring of aurora and other space weather events.

Planning on trying to see the northern lights over the next few nights? Here’s how to snap the best picture.