Will the northern lights be visible in Utah on Sunday night?

SALT LAKE CITY — The northern lights could make a return to Utah on Sunday night. This comes after the lights dazzled some lucky residents in April, according to the National Weather Service.

View of the northern lights is expected to be ideal in northern parts of the country between 9 p.m. and midnight Sunday. The chance to see the lights is expected to decrease Monday night.

Utah's own NASA ambassador, Patrick Wiggins, has previously shared some tips for giving yourself the best chance to the lights. The Space Weather Prediction Center has its own set of tips, too.

Cloud cover is one of the factors that prevent residents from seeing the northern lights. Many of Utah's residents are expected to face 15-20% cloud cover.

Utah is not known to be an ideal place to catch the northern lights. The reasons why it has been happening is a matter of discussion among experts.

Wiggins said there could be an explanation for why we're seeing more of this kind of activity lately.

"The sun gets kind of active, and then it goes down and up and down. It's like an 11-year cycle, and sometimes it's more active than usual, and maybe that's what's happening. I don't know," he previously told KSL-TV.

A multicolored display of the northern lights was visible during the late hours of April 25 and the early morning hours of April 26. The surprise appearance led to plenty of Utah residents catching many photos of the electromagnetic event.

The northern lights are the result of charged particles from the sun hitting the Earth's atmosphere and then interacting with gases in the magnetosphere high above the surface of the planet.

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