Strongest Northern Lights In Decades As Far South As Wyoming

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has bumped up this weekend's geomagnetic storm watch to a level G4, the highest on the scale.

These coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are heading toward Earth right now and will cause a beautiful aurora borealis that could be seen as far south as Wyoming, Friday night and into the weekend.

There is a good chance of those clouds moving out of the way.

A watch at this level is rare, and is issued only when "highly elevated" geomagnetic activity is on the way.

Watch the video below from Don Day of Day weather.

Scroll to 5:25 in the video where he begins his report on this event.

We have not seen an event this big since 2000.

May 10th and 11th should be the peak.

Get out someplace with very little human "light pollution" on Friday night into Saturday.

The NOAA defines CMEs as an "eruption of solar material," and as they approach our planet, we can experience a geomagnetic storm. With this particular event, the CMEs are expected to merge as they near Earth and could arrive as early as late Friday (May 10).

The NOAA Space Weather Scale helps communicate to the public what impacts we could see from space weather conditions both across the planet and when it comes to anything in low earth orbit (LEO). (Space.com).

Don't expect to see what they see up in Alaska.

Down as far as Wyoming you'll see a bit of color in the night sky.

If you have a camera that can do long exposers you'll get a lot more out of it.

Clouds in Wyoming will dissipate overnight and that should give us a good view.

There have been duds before so if you are going to stay up, good luck.

But this is your best chance in many years.