Looked out of our cabin’s bedroom window at 3:45 am this morning … Uff dah! Decided I needed to get dressed and head down to the lake (North Star Lake in northern Minnesota). While Northern Lights forecasts are notoriously poor, the numbers / forecast are much actually much better for tonight, Saturday, September 3rd. See the Aurora Borealis section of this blog to learn more about how and when to watch the Northern Lights in northern Minnesota. Life is good when you may watch Lady Aurora dance from your own bed!
Tag Archives: Northern Lights
A Night to Remember: Northern Lights
Six years ago in 2016 the sun was very active, and on the night of August 2, 2016, I was up on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area when a G2 Aurora Borealis storm hit. I stayed up ALL night! The BWCA is rated as having perfectly dark skies. Now in 2022 we are once again heading into a Solar Maximum period. I can’t wait!
See the Northern Lights section of my blog about maximizing you chances to see the Northern Lights in my neck of the woods. Why am I reposting about a night from six years ago? There are two reasons:
- The images demonstrate that one may view Northern Lights displays, even in summer, in northeastern Minnesota!
- I still have the original files from that fantastic night, which allowed me to reedit the images from scratch using Topaz Lab’s Sharpen AI (my blog post about Topaz). The results are impressive in terms of image improvement when considering the fact I was dealing with naturally “noisy” images because of high ISO night photography.
The person in some of the photographs is me. I used a time delay that allowed me to get into some of my own images. I also did foreground light painting with an extremely small flashlight in a few images. Let me stress I had visited each of these locations multiple times during the day. Thus, I knew “in advance” at night what to expect deep in the wilderness.
First Set of Images: Shallow Lake well inland from Isabella (a bit before midnight)
Second Set of Images: Pagami Creek Wildfire Area (about 1:30 am) 
Third Set of Images: Sunrise at Greenwood Lake (about 4 am)
If you’re curious as to where I was that night, see below. I still use this region frequently for watching Northern Lights displays. I had actually started driving home to Duluth and pulled into the Greenwood Lake public boat launch to catch a few winks in the back of my Subaru Outback. However, when I realized the Aurora was firing up again I was able to view the pre dawn lights plus the Northern Lights at the same time. Super cool!
Nature’s App Notifications
Two nights ago I was up at our cabin on Northstar Lake, which is 30 miles north of Grand Rapids, and 100 miles northwest of Duluth. I have Nature 2.0 installed in my brain! What, not an Android or Apple app?! Nope, but my app is even better, and includes notifications which may NOT be turned off. Do you pay attention to nature’s notifications?
About 1:30 am in the morning all the loons on the lake started yodeling. I know from experience that when the loons yodel during the wee hours of the morning, a good northern lights display is often in process. Thus, even though the temperature fell to 41F that night, I threw on a heavy sweater over my pajama tops and walked down to the dock. The loons were correct. While I have seen much better Aurora Borealis displays, it was worth the short walk.
The next morning I found this Common Loon Mom and her nest. It will be fun to see her young. The nest is only 250 yards from our dock.