Colorful Colorado’s skies came alive with color this week. Residents from Palisade to Fruita and beyond were treated to a rare sight as the northern lights lit up the night in vivid shades of red, green, and pink. This extraordinary display was created by a major sun flare which collided with Earth’s magnetic field, a phenomenon usually seen in northern regions such as Canada or Scandinavia. For many in Fruita, the dominant red aurora was unforgettable.

Colorful Colorado has just gotten more colorful. Last week residents in Mesa County, Colorado, experienced a rare sight of the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights. Shades of red, pink, and green illuminated the night sky as the solar storm reached Earth’s atmosphere.

Nancy McGuire in the Grand Junction Sentinel expressed how, “the human eye is not as sensitive as the camera, so very often for humans the sky might appear like a glowing white color or some white bands of light. This was a clearly visible bright red sky, like a pulsating red sky” (West).

This natural phenomenon occurs when the sun’s plasma comes in contact with Earth’s magnetic field. As they interact, the ions start to glow. On November 11, 2025, a major solar flare erupted from the sun and produced a large Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME). The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) noticed this and issued a G4 (“Severe") geomagnetic storm watch for November 12.

The aurora borealis is most commonly seen in the northern latitudes such as Alaska, Canada, Iceland, and Scandinavia. The rarity of this event is evident in how far south the northern lights were seen, including states such as Texas and Florida.

The view of the northern lights from Fruita, Colorado were predominantly shades of red with some hues of green. According to NASA, “The color of an aurora depends on the type of gas that is hit and where that gas is located in the atmosphere” (NASA). The pink and blue color in the sky is caused by excited nitrogen gas interacting with the charged particles. The most common color, green, is caused by oxygen interacting with the sun’s particles. The dominant red color seen in Fruita is also produced by oxygen, but at much higher altitudes than the green aurora.