Northern lights in Marquette: tonight’s chance

Lake Superior as a horizon

The geometry of a storm at the edge of your range is simple: the aurora sits low in the north, perhaps ten degrees up, and anything taller than a house a few hundred meters away hides it. Marquette's shoreline removes that problem. North of the city there is nothing but water for well over a hundred miles, and on a clear night the lake surface is black. Photographers who line up the ore dock or the lighthouse in the foreground are using the same open horizon that lets the eye see a faint arc.

The lake also brings the main drawback. In January the average cloud amount reaches 81%, the highest of the year, as cold air crossing the open water builds lake-effect cloud along the south shore. Inland, toward the Michigamme highlands, a storm night can be clearer than on the beach.

What each storm level means here

At Kp 5.1 the aurora rises above Marquette's northern horizon in the view line used on this site. One level higher, a G2 (Moderate) storm moves it higher and brighter, and around Kp 5.1 the oval itself passes overhead, the nights when the sky to the south lights up too.

The comparison with the rest of the state is in the table below and on the Michigan page: Detroit needs about 6.7, so a storm that makes the evening news in the south of the state is often a strong show here.

Summer nights and winter nights

Marquette's longest dark window, in December, lasts 11.7 hours on the 15th, from 6:52 PM to 6:37 AM. In June it shrinks to 2.5 hours, from 12:33 AM to 3:06 AM, which leaves little room for a storm to line up with darkness. March and September sit between, with about 8.7 and 8.0 hours. Winter cold is the other constraint: a long night at the shore in January is a serious outing, and the phone photography guide explains why batteries die faster then.