The appearance of the mystical Aurora Borealis over the Twin Cities this past midweek was more than welcome. It was as though the heavens opened up and said, “you all need to take a deep breath, so here’s a little razzle dazzle from the beginning of time.”

Swirling red fairy tale castle towers and witchy waving green gowns tumbling like waves across the sky. I saw ice and fire and sparkling curtains that gathered and fell, gathered and fell, like spent fireworks shells.

We often see the rain coming in distant ghostly sheets. We rarely see drapes of such colorful wizardry. With rain we know what to expect, but with the Aurora Borealis we don’t know what’s next, except that it’s bound to be hypnotic and enchanting.

So, we took a breath and then the reports started coming in, like the old days of school closures in a snowstorm. We’ve got the lights in Ely and Owatonna, Hibbing and Taylors Falls, Alexandria, Pine City, Stillwater and White Bear.

The cities said, what about us? Lake of the Isles, Mounds View, South St. Paul and Cottage Grove, Champlin and Woodbury and Minnetonka. Oh, to be on a lake!

ICYMI: Solar storm forecasts come true, trigger northern lights

I’m not exactly sure what the question is, but northern lights is the answer.

Northern Lights over the Twin Cities on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (Kevin Cusick / Pioneer Press)

Says he who has seen them only twice, once with the naked eye in the middle of summer out on Leech Lake. They were spectacular and initially so off-putting that I felt like raising my hands in the air to say, “I am not a threat.” The power of all that sun-spilled electricity was beyond my understanding then, and now.

Now was the other night, as close as the parking lot at the Highland golf course in St. Paul. There were dozens of us pulled in, probably thinking we might gain an advantage with vast dark acreage before us. But I saw nothing significant by naked eye. Using my cellphone camera, the sky became alive with color. I entertained the idea that using a camera was somehow disqualifying from reporting the real deal. Turns out I would be ridiculously alone selling that contention. I suppose nobody would claim they didn’t hear you because they only heard you through a radio speaker.

The cellphone’s sensors are more sensitive to light and can capture a longer exposure than our eyes. I had to look that up.

Back home, I realized that I wouldn’t have had to go anywhere. My phone captured the same mystical showering of color above my own roof. Text messages began pinging like mad. The daughter of a kid I used to have sent stunning images.

“Where is she?” A great fuss developed as to her whereabouts; I thought I was missing out.

“On the front steps,” her mother said.

“Oh.”

A friend of mine flying between St. Louis and Washington, D.C., texted me a naked-eye photo. Watermelon, I thought, a long green rind on the horizon with a huge red slice above it.

One of the other kids got a cellphone beauty from her back yard, appearing to me to resemble a large green bowl topped with the petals of a red rose.

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All of that was Tuesday night.

Word spread the next day, that this night, Wednesday night, could be even better. I polished up my phone. Alas, Wednesday night appeared to be one of those times where a drive north into a darker landscape would have paid off. I wasn’t getting much, if anything, from the phone. Up north, they saw the spectacular display. They could very well be so accustomed to the lights that they don’t bother to text each other.

In the cities, we returned to our regularly scheduled lives.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.