Spectacular Northern Lights Over Missouri & Illinois Thursday?

It's almost a certainty that the Northern Lights will be visible this Thursday night. The only question is where. Experts are saying it could be as spectacular over Missouri and Illinois as the incredible display that happened earlier this year.

Space Weather just shared an interesting alert about an incoming coronal mass ejection that they say NOAA and NASA agree is earth-directed. They say that Sunspot AR3848 was responsible for an X1.8-class solar flare. Get this. The explosion from the sun lasted for FIVE HOURS. Incredible.

Here's the current Aurora Borealis forecast from NOAA's Aurora Dashboard.

The red line is where the Northern Lights should be visible at least on the horizon. This is almost identical to the forecast that we had in the middle of May this year when the Aurora Borealis was visible overhead in almost all of Missouri.

Even the National Weather Service in St. Louis believes the Northern Lights will possibly be visible in Missouri Thursday and Friday night.

My wife told me the KP index (used to characterize the severity of geomagnetic storms) is expected to be near or over 8 for northern Missouri Thursday night. The estimated time the Northern Lights are expected to be visible will be from sunset Thursday night until 3am Friday morning, October 11.

Keep in mind that the Northern Lights forecast can and will change between now and Thursday night, but I'd be get your phone camera and tripod ready if I were you. There's a very good chance the Northern Lights will dance over our heads again if the skies are clear. Here are pics I took back on May 10 so you can see how brilliant this Thursday night might be over Missouri and Illinois.