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Justin Schmidt's 2018 photo at Cow Creek that was directly referenced in the story, the one used by the media company "Only in South Dakota."

A photo Justin Schmidt took of the northern lights on May 28, 2022, just east of Pierre.

Justin Schmidt's 2018 photo at Cow Creek that was directly referenced in the story, the one used by the media company "Only in South Dakota."

No ticket to Alaska required — northern lights can be caught in Pierre. Chances of catching the famed aurora borealis will continue to increase for about the next three years, according to a Pierre-based hobbyist and two scientific experts.

The increase in solar activity will peak sometime around 2025, culminating in what’s known as a “solar max.” As solar activity builds, so do the lights, which become visible further and further south.

In 2018, the lights were captured over Pierre’s Cow Creek Recreation Area by photographer and Pierre native Justin Schmidt. The picture garnered over 200 shares on Facebook when it was posted by the media company “Only In South Dakota.” But locals who didn’t see Schmidt’s image might still be unaware that the marvel happens here.

“I thought you had to go to Alaska or Greenland or something,” Schmidt said. “I was super excited when I learned you could see (the northern lights) in Pierre. Everyone else needs to know that. It just depends on the magnitude of the storms.”

Solar storms send charged particles hurtling from the sun towards Earth. These particles, or “solar wind,” create the dazzling displays of light we call aurora.

In 1859, the most intense solar storm ever recorded cast red auroras as far south as Cuba and Columbia. That occurrence — called the “Carrington Event” — is rare. If it were to happen today, it would cause catastrophic damage to the power grid — a multi-billion dollar disaster of biblical proportions.

The vibrant light show sometimes called “the hem of God’s garment” belies a force more powerful than many realize. Even though Schmidt’s focus is on the lights themselves, he also commands an impressive understanding of the science that drives them.

“I taught myself everything I know,” he said. “I am no expert in any subject. I just really enjoy it all.”

“Amateur,” after all, comes from a French word meaning "one who loves.”

Schmidt’s expensive equipment — also formidable — seemed more like the tools of a professional than a simple hobbyist. But photographing the marvels of mother nature has been his passion for the past decade.

If Schmidt isn’t chasing the aurora he might be hunting tornados. Schmidt’s part-time photography gig is one he embraces with a full-time passion. Following the aurora, what he called “astrophotography,” remains just one of Schmidt’s many mistresses. He’s also in love with kayaking, fishing and camping.

A photo Justin Schmidt took of the northern lights on May 28, 2022, just east of Pierre.

When Schmidt founded the South Dakota Aurora Notification Group on Facebook, he hoped to attract one thousand members — the group is now more than ten times that size. In it, users comment on photos of the aurora, which they sometimes call “the colors” or simply a “storm.” Occasionally, Schmidt will weigh in, dropping a few pearls of self-taught wisdom for new members, while clarifying that he’s “no expert on the subject by any means.”

Don Hampton is more serious in his approach, as the long title might suggest — the research associate professor at the geophysical institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He said living in Alaska gives him “one of the most consistent places to see the lights.”

Hampton’s friendship with a woman he met as an undergraduate took time to blossom into marriage. In fact, it took Hampton longer to fall in love with his wife than it took for both of them to fall in love with Alaska. But today, the pair are wedded to the state.

The lines of life’s trajectory are unpredictable, but the aurora can be roughly mapped. Hampton said the lights reside within an “auroral oval” around the Earth’s magnetic field. The year 2025 is only an estimate for the “solar maximum,” but that’s the time when the oval will expand farthest, likely encompassing Pierre.

“The sun’s magnetic field actually reverses every 11 years or so. That’s when it’s actually collapsing and turning around — that’s when you get solar maximum,” Hampton explained. “That’s when you get a lot of sunspots on the surface of the sun.”

Without fully knowing what he was witnessing, the astronomer Richard Carrington sketched sunspots on the day that would be named after him — Sept 1, 1859. Soon after, there were reports of telegraph machines belching torrents of sparks, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. The night sky grew so brightly red that it was possible to read by its light.

The dark “spots” Carrington observed on the sun were caused by unusually powerful magnetic fields. When they entangle, these fields can provoke an explosion of energy known as a solar flare.

An associated but separate event called a coronal mass ejection (CME) is what drives the aurora borealis. Flares and CMEs are often part of a string of interactions loosely defined as a storm. When 40 SpaceX satellites were knocked out of the sky in February, a solar storm was blamed for the loss.

Although auroras can indicate danger, Hampton said it’s hard not to revel in their beauty when you encounter one.

“It really is just amazing to see,” he said. “You and I, if we're watching the aurora, we're not in any danger. The issue is how it can affect our infrastructure overall — what we call geomagnetically induced currents can take down power lines and affect pipelines.”

Hampton recalled a large solar storm that, in 1987, cast aurora as far south as Houston. It also completely fried a Canadian electrical grid — Quebec suffered a total province-wide blackout.

Although it doesn’t take more than a low-energy storm to cast auroras over Alaska, only very rare and extreme ones push aurora over southern states. For the Dakotas, though, a moderate storm is enough.

“North and South Dakota get to see aurora not too infrequently. That oval I talked about expands depending on the intensity of solar storms,” Hampton said. “The midsized storms can affect Minnesota, the Dakotas, over into the Great Lakes where you get to see a little bit more.”

As an arm of the U.S. government, the folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operate under higher stakes and funding than Schmidt or Hampton. You might find them gazing into a computer screen rather than directly into the night sky.

The scientists under NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) care less about the aurora borealis than they do about the dangerous solar winds behind it.

As program coordinator at the SWPC, Bill Murtagh looks for sunspot clusters. These “localized magnetic stress areas” can be a warning sign, like a receding tide before a tsunami. Rather than ocean currents, Murtagh is concerned with magnetic fields.

“It’s kind of like twisting a rubber band. If you keep twisting it, it finally snaps,” Murtagh said.

The “snap,” Murtagh explained, is the solar flare. But the flare alone does not create a geomagnetic storm or drive the northern lights.

“What we’re looking for after that big flash of light is the coronal mass ejection (CME). We see if that flaring region throws out a billion-ton blast of energetic particles into space,” Murtagh said.

Unlike the speed-of-light energy released by a solar flare, the magnetic field from a CME moves more slowly — 1 to 6 million miles per hour. A flare’s journey to Earth takes about eight minutes, the CME requires a day or two. When the sun’s ejected magnetic field reaches earth, “It’s just like putting two magnets together,” Murtagh explained. “Earth is basically one big magnet.”

Much like a first date, things get interesting when the sun’s field hits earth’s.

“They’re gonna couple. The way they couple is gonna dictate the intensity of the disturbance. That is our geomagnetic storm. The solar storm occurred two days earlier,” Murtagh said.

This cascade of events drives the aurora, but the lights themselves aren’t important to Murtagh’s central mission.

“We don't care that much about the aurora. We (monitor) because we're protecting critical assets like satellites, or the electric power grid in the Dakotas — we talk to those folks all the time,” he said. “When you see big auroras down in your neck of the woods, that's not a good thing for the folks that are operating critical infrastructure. There can be lots of problems.”

The beautiful northern lights that everyone wants to see are just a byproduct of a much larger process. Like the Enhanced Fujita scale that measures the power of tornadoes, geomagnetic storms are also measured from one to five.

“One is minor, five is extreme … certainly, when we get to G3 or G4, which happens quite frequently, the aurora will be visible in South Dakota,” Murtagh said.

In one case recently, Murtagh recalled that a strong G2 was sufficient to send auroras over North Dakota.

“I don’t think people realize, as beautiful as they are, there is a danger to them,” Schmidt said.

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Michael Leifer | 605-224-7301 ext. 131

Reporter Michael Leifer graduated from Fordham University with a bachelor's degree in journalism. He moved to Pierre in 2022.

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