Pinedale photographer Dave Bell knew the coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — the solar phenomenon that creates colorful auroras — incoming on Tuesday was going to be a good one, so he rushed to the Seven Mile River Ranch between Daniel and Pinedale to see the show.
What unfolded overhead was what Bell called "the best (aurora) I've ever seen."
"What impressed me was the width and breadth of the lights," he said. "They stretched 180 degrees, north to south, across the sky. You'd look straight up, and there was a big white cloud that had formed overhead.
"In the camera's eyes, it was brilliant green. It encompassed the entire sky."
From a high bluff overlooking the river, Bell used two cameras to take more than 840 photographs of the red and green skies overhead. The reflection from the water and silhouetted cottonwood trees made it "an unbelievable vantage point" for his shots.
"Boy, did Mother Nature ever give us a show last night," he said.
Bell wasn’t the only Wyomingite to notice the intense and widespread aurora. Hundreds of social media posts have shown off the Northern Lights, including a handful of sheriff’s offices parking their patrol cars under them.
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell)
The Best Yet
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a Geomagnetic Storm Watch on Tuesday after two CMEs erupted from the surface of the sun.
“We had two CMEs that were released from the sun 48 to 72 hours ago,” Jan Curtis, a retired meteorologist and former Wyoming State climatologist, told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. “When multiple CMEs arrive at the same time, they have an amplifying effect.
"It's not just one after another. It actually doubles or triples the intensity of each CME because of the way they overlap and interact with each other.”
The amplified auroras were so intense that they reached from the North Pole to cover almost all of the Lower 48.
"From the last I saw, the aurora was seen in 45 states," said Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day. "That's pretty significant."
By the time the CMEs reached Earth, they were moving at 4.4 million mph and had intensified into a Severe G4 geomagnetic storm. For reference on how intense that is, the SWPC's scale peaks at G5.
The combined CMEs were so powerful that they were seen as far south as Mexico. It was easily the most intense geomagnetic storm of 2025 and one of the most intense in the last several years.
"This one rivaled the one we had in May 2024, which was pretty remarkable," Day said. "It was a spectacular show."
According to Curtis, Tuesday night’s auroras happened under similar circumstances to the ones that appeared over Wyoming in May 2024, when multiple CMEs amplified each other. Atmospheric conditions were also favorable and added to the intensity.
“We had a nice trio of indices,” he said. “There was a lot of density in the solar winds, which means there were a lot of particles to excite in our atmosphere.
"We also had negative Bz, which basically means the Earth’s magnetic field embraced the solar winds rather than repulsing them. That caused them to fall further into the Earth's atmosphere."
Curtis said the May 2024 event is still the largest CME event of the current solar cycle, but Tuesday night was a very close second.
“It wasn’t a G5, but it had all the hallmarks of becoming one,” he said.
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Laura Redmond) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Bonnie Smith) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Laura Redmond) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Laura Redmond) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Bonnie Smith) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell)
Snakes, Streaks, And Arcs
From her home in Bar Nunn, photographer Laura Redmond was monitoring the CMEs as soon as they collided with Earth's atmosphere. She knew it was going to be a night to remember before sunset.
"I had been monitoring the numbers all day," she said. "By 4:30 p.m., I called all my friends and told them to get their stuff ready. By 6 p.m., I could see them in town with the naked eye."
Redmond rushed out to "the middle of nowhere," specifically Poison Spider Road west of Casper. She started shooting at 7 p.m. and kept shooting until after midnight.
"It was pretty phenomenal," she said. "I saw things that I hadn't seen before."
Redmond saw several Stable Aurora Red (SAR) arcs streaking across the sky.
They were moving at different speeds, creating an ever-changing tapestry of vibrant reds and pinks overhead with streaks of green, white, and purple on the periphery.
"One of the things that I saw that I hadn't seen before was a ribbon right on the edge of the aurora," she said. "It looked like a snake, moving pretty fast through the sky, and that was fun to watch."
She also saw a unique auroral phenomenon called a "picket fence."
It was a strong thermal emission velocity enhancement (STEVE), a super-hot streak of plasma that isn't directly related to CMEs but is only known to occur during them.
"It's always a fun phenomenon, but this one went right over my head," she said. "I loved it."
Redmond said the display's intensity was due to the staggered arrival of two CMEs moving at different speeds that changed the dynamics of the ongoing display throughout the night.
"The one that was slower hit first," she said. "Then, the one that was moving faster hit an hour or two after the first. That's why we had such a display like we did. It was one CME after another."
What stood out most to Redmond was the colors and coverage of Tuesday night's aurora. Green auroras are the most common, but Tuesday night's skies were dominated by red.
"There was a lot of red last night, which is very unique," she said. "You usually don't get a ton of red. We've gotten some good shows in Wyoming, but last night was unique. It's the best I've ever seen in Wyoming."
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell) 
A night of intensely colorful auroras put on a show over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere Tuesday night. They were so powerful that even photographers with decades of experience capturing auroras say they were the “best ever” seen in Wyoming. (Courtesy Dave Bell)
Another Night?
The SWPC has an ongoing Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch in effect for Wednesday night as well.
Another CME was expected to reach Earth around noon, and "the heart" of its magnetic cloud could be severe enough to continue manifesting auroras over Wyoming and much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Curtis believes the likelihood of another intense aurora event not happening on Wednesday night is “very slim,” but there are no guarantees.
“We’ll only know when it eventually hits the Earth and we can measure it directly,” he said. “Not all solar flares generate CMEs, even intense flares like this one.
"If it does take place, I suspect it'll be in the evening hours, right after sunset, where it gets dark. I'd certainly be on the lookout for a pretty big display that could reach a magnitude of G3 or G4.”
Weather-wise, Wyoming lucked out on Tuesday night. If there is another intense aurora on Wednesday, Day doesn't expect the view to be as good.
"The skies were relatively clear (Tuesday night), so it made the viewing really easy," he said. "The aurora was so bright that people could see the glow even with some cloud cover, but if there is another aurora tonight, we're going to have more clouds.”
Curtis said the sun is dropping out of its solar maximum, a period when there’s an abundance of sunspots generating CMEs and increasing the chances of dazzling auroras over Earth.
When the sun starts shifting into its solar minimum, the chances of auroras decrease significantly.
“The sun goes through an 11-to-22-year cycle when it goes from very active to very quiet,” he said. “I would say that we have a six-to-nine-month window before these types of events have a very low probability of occurring until the next maximum cycle.”
Redmond isn't one to be deterred by cloud cover. If there's another aurora of the same intensity overnight, she'll go wherever she can to see it.
"I'm looking to see where the least amount of clouds are going to be tonight and hopefully drive somewhere to get out of the clouds," she said. "As long as you can see stars or you have a break in the horizon, you should be able to see the aurora."
Bell was in the same boat. His priority for Wednesday was making up for lost sleep in anticipation of another incredible evening.
"The talk is that the CME rolling in is going to be a doozy," he said. "If it's big, I'll be somewhere. I haven't decided where yet, but I know I've got to get some sleep before tonight."
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
