Is it possible for severe cold (~0 F) and relatively high humidity (~85%) to create an effect like the Aurora Borealis in areas where they are not normally seen?
Some variant onSaint Elmo’s fire?
If this effect is seen in the hours following dusk or preceding dawn, it could be due to noctilucent clouds, formed of ice crystals that reflect sunlight that is still shining at high altitude even after sundown.
Well, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks creates artificial auroras for reseach. Of course they had acres of antenna “farm” and a generator the size of small house, so its not really a do it yourself project.
Thanks for the responses. Totally should have elaborated. My girlfriend received a text from her mother around 3am last night in which she said that she could see the Aurora Borealis. I once saw a similar phenomenon out by where my girlfriend’s parents live, but that was a major news story at the time and we were looking for it - last night we could find no mention of it other than the text, and so I decided it wouldn’t be too good of an idea to drive 50 miles out of the city just to see what could be - in my extremely limited scientific understanding - a trick of the weather and/or eye.
The humidity % and temperature caught my eye, because if there’s one thing I thought I knew about cold weather, it’s that the humidity is usually limited when the temp goes deep enough below freezing (or if that’s not the case, then that the relative humidity would be physically ‘at odds’ with the molecular limitations of a deep freeze… or something like that).
Squink, long story short, that’s what I was wondering but couldn’t place the name.
Fear Itself, that sounds about right, thanks for that.
billfish678, it’s funny because I read about that in WIRED a while back and only later learned that the HAARP is the target of several wild conspiracy theories. I just think it’s sort of brilliant, but what do I know? (Rhetorical question, please don’t answer ;))
just thought I would point out that your posts assume we can figure out where you live. As is, we have no idea of what latitude or hemisphere you live in and have no idea how likely it is that Aurora Borealis can be observed at your location. Though I can say with certainty that it is almost impossible to see the Aurora Borealis in the southern hemisphere. If for no other reason than it would be obscured by the Aurora Australis. So I guess that narrows it down some. 
In the northern hemisphere Aurora Borealis has been observed as far south as 21.5 deg latitude.
Over 20 years or so, I’ve seen it 3 or 4 times from FLORIDA. And two of those times were actually pretty damn nice displays.
November, 2003 by chance?
Nope, GOOD one mid to late 80’s. And another one winter/spring of 2000 I think. But I do remember the alert for that one. Cloudy here IIRC.
Never seen one.
Ever.
Tenessee area.
Sorry about that. I’m in Chicago, where the last time we were able to see the lights* was, indeed, November 2003.
- In hindsight, not sure if it was ‘the’ lights, but we were able to see something amazing flashing around in the sky for an hour or more.
I could be wrong, but I think it would be hard to see even a good display of the Northern Lights from within any major metropolitan area because of light pollution. Don’t you need a pretty dark sky?
I saw them only once, in Saskatoon, and had to drive out of town a ways to see them.
They were faint, but pretty cool. What surprised me was the feeling I got that there was some meaning to them, even though I knew there wasn’t really.
In 2003 (it was long ago, not entirely sure how long ago but I’m going to go with Nov. 2003 due to the earlier mention) I could see some sort of lights coursing throughout the night sky during the entirety of a long drive from the western exurbs to downtown, and I could still see these lights when I reached my apartment (2 miles NE of downtown) a little over an hour later. The whole thing was really odd and wonderful. As I recall, the lights were predominantly green with trace flickers of blue. The news was calling it the Aurora Borealis and kept going on about how rare it was (duh) but I’ve always wondered if it was, indeed, the Aurora Borealis or some other phenomenon. New thread? 
I know I’ve seen the northern lights from Rockford, Illinois. However, I kind of obsessively track Spaceweather.com, and so I was looking for it. It was pretty, but subtle. What you saw in your latest post sounds like that, 'cause that’s what I saw.
That being said, did the most recent one look like this? Because that is caused by sub-zero temperatures…
It is usually extremely difficult to see the aurora in urban areas, but I wouldn’t say impossible: The second time I ever saw them, it was on a boat on the river in Montreal. If you saw something green, glowing, and moving in the sky, then it probably was the aurora, even through the light pollution.