Northern Lights Seen in Deep South

The Deep South isn’t exactly the place you think of when you hear “northern lights.” But the aurora borealis was in fact visible from Oklahoma City, Memphis, and Atlanta last night, hundreds of miles farther south than is typical. "A storm on the sun's surface was blown off, and the solar wind scattered it," a meteorologist explains to CNN about the solar outburst that caused the anomaly. "The energy and magnetism interact with the Earth's atmosphere and the magnetic field."

Usually, US dwellers can only see the northern lights from northern cities like Seattle or Boston—so, not surprisingly, Twitter was alight with comments about the phenomenon. MSNBC has some great photos, or click through the gallery for more shots of past northern lights. (More aurora borealis stories.)