The Northern Lights may be visible at night in parts of the northern United States

Residents as far south as Missouri reported seeing the northern lights Monday evening, as forecasters said the phenomenon known as the northern lights would likely last for several more hours on clear skies in some parts of the northern United States.

The Northern Lights get their name because they typically light up the sky at higher latitudes. They “will be visible across much of the Northland through this evening,” according to the National Weather Service office in Duluth, Minnesota. written late monday on X, formerly Twitter. The Northland is a term that generally refers to northeastern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin.

Unconfirmed reports of northern lights sightings began pouring in on social media Monday evening, Cory Rothstein, a meteorologist at the weather service’s Duluth office, said in a brief telephone interview. He added that skies over the region would likely remain clear overnight.

Mr. Rothstein directed questions about the aurora borealis to space weather forecasters at the federal government’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

The center said earlier this week that a moderate geomagnetic storm could occur over the northern United States late Monday and Tuesday morning. Its forecast models suggested that people in certain areas of the West and Midwest had the best chance of seeing the Northern Lights.

Unconfirmed sightings occurred in Indiana, Wisconsin and elsewhere Monday evening. Conditions for viewing the northern lights in western New York overnight also appeared “encouraging,” said Eric Snitil, chief meteorologist at WROC television station in Rochester, N.Y. York. said the late Monday.

The northern lights were already visible to the naked eye as far away as Missouri Monday evening, said Tyler Schlitt, a part-time photographer who lives near St. Louis and was photographing the sky from a field next to a gravel road near the town of Elsberry, Missouri.

Mr. Schlitt, 32, said by telephone around 11 p.m. that the red pillars he had seen earlier had since disappeared. He had a 90-minute drive home and a shift starting at 7 a.m., he said, so he planned to pack up soon — unless the colors on his device’s screen photo suddenly intensify.

“If I see a lot of them, I’ll stay a little later,” he said.