Extraordinary Aurora Borealis Photos Caught Around Oregon, Even South Coast

Published 8/13/24 at 5:55 a.m.
By Andre' GW Hagestedt, Oregon Coast Beach Connection

(Portland, Oregon) – Barely 11 p.m. on Sunday and social media around the Pacific Northwest starts lighting up. One of the first images comes from up north, at Washington's inner coastline at Port Townsend: big, bright aurora borealis and its massive curtains. (Photo Julie Conrad - near Waldport)

Meanwhile, NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado around 1 a.m. had Oregon just out of the auroral zone on their half-hour prediction page. It was not looking good. Yet the region beat those odds.

By 2 a.m., photos from around the Oregon coast come piling in. First Yachats – which is interesting because that's much farther down south than anticipated. Then Lincoln City pops up.

By 3 a.m., Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff from the Portland office made it out to a park nearby and could see the vague purple in the sky to the north – just barely. We managed to photograph it along with a super bright Jupiter and Venus. Sure enough, it wasn't just an illusion. That was the aurora borealis, but seriously drained of color by all the city lights of Portland.

Yachats by Jaklyn Larsen Photography: you can see two shooting stars in the upper left top of the curtain (click to enlarge)

Those outside the area got the good stuff. Whatever the half-hour predictions, the geomagnetic storm from a series of CME's earlier this week increased. NOAA noted earlier Monday that the storm category shot up from a G2 to G4 in the wee hours.

Among the lucky ones were Yachats' Jaklyn Larsen of Jaklyn Larsen Photography. She and the rest of the Oregon coast got even luckier: the skies cleared instead of sticking to the National Weather Service's mostly cloudy forecast.

Courtesy Newport Parks and Rec Department

Larsen said she was surprised by the turn in the weather. She was coming back from the valley rather late at night and coming up just out of Florence when she saw the display.

“I could see a faint glow of the lights similar to what I had witnessed in May,” Larsen told Oregon Coast Beach Connection. “The lights cast a unique hue across the horizon and out over the ocean. I stayed out for a little over two hours, starting at 11pm. The most colorful action I observed from the aurora happened after midnight. I found a small vehicle turnout beside the highway just south of Yachats and quickly set up my camera.”

Jaklyn Larsen Photography

There, Larsen said she saw pink curtains dancing across the sky. After a few images, she was able to confirm what it looked like: that was indeed the northern lights.

She was using 3- to 6-second exposures.

Not far, Yachats' Julie Conrad caught the shot near Waldport at the very top.

Above: In Damascus, close to the Columbia Gorge, Kelly Misenhimer Smith. Much of this state and Washington were putting on a show.

Beyond that, the Perseid meteor showers were firing off like crazy, which hasn't been seen much in the Portland area lately. Outside of big cities, it made quite the scene as well. That was the icing on the cake for many photographing this.

Yachats by Jaklyn Larsen Photography: click to enlarge to see at least two shooting stars

“While I have witnessed many meteor showers over the years, this one seemed more active and more brilliant than any others I recall,” Larsen said. “There were a few falling stars that were so bright, they had me speechless as they streaked across the sky. While I was able to see many of them with the naked eye, I was quite surprised to see how many other meteors were captured in my images that I had not noticed while watching the skies.”

Not far up the central Oregon coast, the Newport Parks and Recreation Department caught one amazing shot from the Nye Beach area.

Discover Port Orford

Down in Port Orford, Discover Port Orford snagged another amazing photo of the northern lights, with Cape Blanco visible in the distance. Battle Rock is the first silhouette you see.

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Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast.

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