Storm chaser describes his experience of capturing the northern lights

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live on Aug. 13 to discuss what it was like getting to record the aurora borealis for a second time this year, in addition to the historic eclipse.

Transcript

00:00From the Eclipse to the Northern Lights, AccuWeather meteorologist Tony Laubach has

00:04captured some incredible images this year, some of these memorable events, and he joins us now

00:09from Northern Colorado to talk about his latest capture from Sunday. Tony, this was pretty exciting.

00:17Yeah, Jeff, it's something kind of odd. I never really considered myself a space weather chaser,

00:23but this year has certainly kept me on my toes in terms of the events and the spontaneity

00:28of that, and that kind of happened again this past Sunday. You've been seeing a lot of the

00:32images on social media of the Northern Lights. We had a show, certainly not as prolific as it was

00:38back in May, but it certainly was one that got a lot of people out the door, myself included.

00:42Obviously, just getting back from my trip tracking Hurricane Debbie and was actually at home in my

00:47pajamas when I started seeing the social media reports fly up, so I grabbed my cameras and ran

00:52about an hour or so up the road and set up, and of course, on top of the Northern Lights,

00:57we had the meteor shower, which was something I also wasn't aware of. In fact, looking at a lot

01:02of the images you're seeing right now, we talk about the Northern Lights, how they're not very

01:06visible to the naked eye, and a lot of the meteors that were in the images weren't either, so you're

01:11really relying on the technology to show those, and when I got back home, started looking through

01:16the pictures, I was amazed how many frames had some of those meteor streaks in it, so it was

01:22certainly an exciting night on Sunday. That's really cool. Tony, you've seen so many amazing

01:27sights this year, so which has been your favorite?

01:33Well, obviously, the notable one this year was the big eclipse that we had in April, but really,

01:38it had to be the May Aurora Borealis, that big show that we had there back in May. I had just

01:44finished a chase trip, actually. We were driving back that Friday from Kansas City, drove all the

01:50way back to my house in Denver, got home, was unloading, started to hear the rumors about how

01:55we were supposed to get this big Aurora show, and I hadn't really done a lot of these, so I was kind

02:01of on a whim, and I kind of decided, you know what? What's another five hours drive? So, got

02:05home, took a shower, and headed five hours north to Gillette, and was treated to, honestly, Jeff,

02:11one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The eclipse is something else, and it was cool

02:16this year, but it was the anticipation. We knew it was coming. These were so spontaneous. I had

02:22no idea what it was in for. I'd never really seen the northern lights, and then to not only capture

02:27the images that I did, but I kind of mentioned it was hard to see this last one. These, you could

02:33see these coming from basically right over top of me, and then just surrounding us on both sides. To

02:38be able to see that in person was just the most unbelievable experience. That's really cool, Tony.

02:43I'm so glad that you had those experiences. We're able to share them with us as the recipients of

02:48some of that good stuff out there.

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