Aldergrove resident Racheal Herrington was brought to tears when she witnessed the northern lights above her home on Friday, May 10.
“I have yearned to see the northern lights as early as I can remember,” she shared with The Star. “The night sky was a safe place for me when I went through some dark stuff as a kid.”
With her husband, Aaron, and her two-year-old son Harry and eight-month-old Huey, Herrington and her family were one of many staying up late to watch the night time rainbow.
Melissa Burris woke her two young daughters to take them to the Aldergrove Regional Park to watch the lights.
“It was an adventure they will remember forever,” she said.
Darren Reibelt said he and his wife, Kim, went to the bowl at the park to witness the northern lights.
“It was a great night with a big crowd. Everyone was neighbourly,” he commented.
Aali Basant from Aldergrove said it was a “mesmerizing dance of lights.”
Images shared online by Aldergrove Star readers show the lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis, could be seen throughout most of Langley.
Other reports said the lights were seen from Vancouver to Victoria, as well as Penticton to Prince George and beyond.
Space Weather Canada said it was the product of massive solar flares, describing it as a “major geomagnetic storm.”
The sun has been producing strong solar flares since Wednesday, May 8, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma. Each eruption — known as a coronal mass ejection — can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
The United State’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the first coronal mass ejections reached Earth Friday night.
Scientists said the flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that’s 16 times the diameter of Earth.
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