Watch: Northern Lights dance over Western Washington skies

SEATTLE, Wash. (KOMO) – Well that was good timing! Just as Seattle undergoes a rare multi-day streak with crystal clear skies, the Northern Lights come out to play!

Several of our Legion of Zoom photographers took advantage of the clear weather and the Friday night to shoot the aurora.

A solar stream hit the atmosphere Friday evening, triggering a geomagnetic storm at just the right time to hit darkness around here. Greg Johnson's HD nighttime time lapse camera in Hansville recorded the show going on for a whopping five hours!

We are just coming out of the solar minimum in the sun's 11-year solar cycle and according to SpaceWeather.com, the new cycle may be starting earlier than expected. As the sun becomes more active, Northern Lights displays could become a little more frequent, culminating with the expected maximum of the current cycle due in around 2024 or 2025.