ManitobaThe sky above Winnipeg was ablaze Tuesday night in a display of colour rarely seen so far south.’One of the best aurora displays I’ve ever seen in my life’: Astronomer Scott YoungDarren Bernhardt · CBC News · Posted: Nov 12, 2025 11:52 AM EST | Last Updated: 3 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.This was the view from Lilli Ritz’s backyard deck in Winnipeg’s Charleswood neighbourhood on Tuesday night. (Submitted by Lilli Ritz)The sky above Winnipeg was ablaze Tuesday night in a brilliant display of colours rarely seen so far south.”This was one of the best aurora displays I’ve ever seen in my life. It was just so bright,” said Scott Young, astronomer at the Manitoba Museum Planetarium in Winnipeg.”I walked outside and was like, the sky is red, what’s going on here? So I moved to a spot where there wasn’t quite as many street lights right in my face and suddenly you could just see all of this glorious aurora.”The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, are caused by storms on the surface of the sun that heave out clouds of electrically charged particles.Three or four nights later some of the particles are captured in the Earth’s magnetic field and get funneled toward the north and south poles, where they collide with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, prompting the colours.”It builds up until it makes the air glow in the dark,” Young said.The displays are most commonly visible near the poles and known as aurora borealis in the north, and aurora australis in the south.”This was such a powerful solar flare that it really triggered a lot of brightness. And the brightness makes the colours easier to see,” said Young.While northern lights have been seen in southern Manitoba before, and even further south into the U.S., they usually appear as a faint green. This time, the sky burned crimson.”This was probably the brightest red aurora that I’ve ever seen in 40 years of watching the sky,” Young said.”It was quite a night. Whatever plans I had for the night sort of just went by the wayside and we just stood outside and looked up. It was just an amazing view.”CBC reporter Josh Crabb took this shot from his balcony. (Josh Crabb/CBC)The colours stood out even in the light pollution of the city, but if you happened to get away from the street lights and into the countryside “you had probably a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Young said.”There wasn’t the sort of traditional curtains and dancing pillars and things like that, that we sort of think of the northern lights. This had so much energy that basically it just filled the whole sky,” he said.”It wasn’t a beautiful paintbrush painting the sky. It was somebody just dumped the whole can of paint on the sky and it was just covered.”The fact it could be seen so well in the city is pretty rare, he said.”Usually from inside the city, the aurora kind of looks like a just sort of a white or a grey haze,” almost like a thin layer of clouds, Young said.Another view of the crimson-coloured northern lights from Lilli Ritz’s backyard. (Submitted by Lilli Ritz)If you’re not sure whether you’re seeing an aurora or not, aim your cellphone camera lens at the sky, Young said.The human eye has a limited ability to perceive faint light sources, and perceive dim light in grayscale. Phone cameras, though, can keep their sensors exposed longer in night mode, allowing them to gather more light detail.”If you’re not sure what you’re seeing, that’ll confirm it,” Young said.The reason for the intense activity right now is the sun is at the maximum phase of its activity cycle. Roughly every 11 years, the sun’s magnetic activity builds to a point where its magnetic field lines are twisted and tangled and do a complete reversal, according to NASA.”We’ve been seeing quite a bit of northern lights over the last year or so and probably [will] for the next year. But right now we are at the peak,” Young said.WATCH — The science behind the northern lights Aurora forecasters had been expecting Tuesday’s fiery display to happen Wednesday night, which means Wednesday’s outlook is now up in the air. Literally.”Usually when it hits, it’s very, very strong and then it sort of dies off, but sometimes it will increase as well, so you wind up having a little bit of uncertainty [about what to expect],” Young said.”It might be better, it might be worse, it might be nothing. The aurora is very fickle and doesn’t really care what we want it to do.”Really, the only way to know is to go out and look.”ABOUT THE AUTHORDarren Bernhardt has been with CBC Manitoba since 2009 and specializes in offbeat and local history stories. He is the author of two bestselling books: The Lesser Known: A History of Oddities from the Heart of the Continent, and Prairie Oddities: Punkinhead, Peculiar Gravity and More Lesser Known Histories.With files from Meaghan Ketcheson
Aurora wows Winnipeggers with rare bright crimson display
