Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Winnipeg Northern Lights/Ice Crystals - November 30, 2010

I was shoveling the mountain of snow left by the plows out of my back lane tonight, and noticed a massive beam of light coming from the direction of McPhillips Street Casino.

I wondered what performer was appearing there that deserved such a massive light show. I turned around to resume my snow clearing attempts and found that the entire sky was filled with beams of what looked like cascading Northern Lights!

My cousin Scott has me thinking that these may have just been ice crystals reflecting the city lights, which makes sense as they shimmered vertically. Not the horizontal 'dancing' you might expect from Aurora Borealis... I sent an email in to CTV weather personalities Sylvia Kuzyk and Jordan Witzel. If anyone can get to the bottom of this, they can!

Got the camera out and snapped the following photos. Obviously, the pictures don't do the phenomenon justice!

Click the images for a larger photo!



The photos were also featured in the a Winnipeg Sun photo gallery titled "Winnipeg's winter wonders".

Currently playing: Helix - Running Wild In The 21st Century.
Currently colouring: The Chronicles of Conan Volume 21: Blood of the Titan and Other Stories
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I saw this too. I live in the St James area, and as I was driving home from work I at first thought it was the lights coming from the airport, but then I looked around and saw they were throughout the entire sky. My friends thought I was wrong, so thank you for your post here! It was quite spectacular, different colors but no dancing. Hopefully they have this on the news in the morning!