Northern lights possible across northern Illinois this weekend

It's been a rather active 48 hours for the sun as one of its sunspots, AR 3664, has released multiple CME's or coronal mass ejections. 

These blasts of electrically charged particles help make the northern lights visible from the poles to as far south as the mid-latitudes. A few of these CMEs in particular were ejected into space hours after the other, hence why the Space Weather Prediction Center issued a G4 geomagnetic storm watch for tonight and Saturday morning. 

G4 storms are described as “severe” on the SWPC's geomagnetic storm scale which consists of 5 categories (G1 through G5). This would make the lights visible as far south as Pennsylvania, central Illinois, northern Kansas, and Oregon. Here's a mind blowing stat... The last time that the SWPC had issued such a watch was back in January 2005. I was 12 years old. 

Again, with each opportunity to view the northern lights comes a few uncertainties. The first of course being the timing in which the solar storm impacts the the Earth's atmosphere. The second is cloud cover. 

Locally, clouds will be trending in the right direction for when viewing is best which is from 1AM-4AM. It's important to point out that this may change throughout the day. A weak system will glide into the western Great Lakes during the evening hours, resulting in a few evening showers.

Timing seems to be from 7PM-11PM, with clouds clearing out into Saturday morning. Another chance to witness the northern lights arrives late Saturday night into Sunday morning. 

IF we do manage to see this opportunity, we'll have a better chance as skies remain clear.