The Northern Lights disappoint Colorado in rare chance to see them

The Northern Lights did not finally make an appearance in Colorado on Saturday night.

While forecasters expected a strong solar flare to potentially allow the Colorado Northern Lights to be seen on Saturday night – a very rare event – the right conditions for a light show never developed, experts said on Sunday.

“The Northern Lights turned out to be a failure last night,” said Ron Hranac, former president of the Denver Astronomical Society.

The cloudy sky blocked the view for most of the Coloradans, but even though it had been clear, the effects of the solar flare were not strong enough to make the Northern Lights visible in Colorado, Hranac said.

“Even with a clear sky, we wouldn’t have seen anything this far south,” he said.

Charles Kuehn, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Northern Colorado, said the lights, if they had appeared, would have been extremely low on the horizon, another obstacle to be seen.

“You should have had a clear, unobstructed view of the northern horizon, all the way to the horizon, to see,” Kuehn said.

He has not received any report from Coloradans who actually spotted the phenomenon, nor from the National Weather Service in Boulder.

Maybe next time, Denver.