A group of us went out to Joshua Tree National Park the weekend of March 30th-April 1st, 2001. We were treated to a display of the Aurora Borealis due to a large solar flare, and lots of flowers. On Friday, Cesar and I met at Hidden Valley Campground and tried to find camp sites. Unfortunately, all of the free campgrounds were full, and our only option was to head 40 miles south to the Cottonwood Campground.

Friday night we were treated to a great sight out in southern Joshua Tree National Park. Turned off our lantern at around 9:30, and the entire northern horizon was glowing red with the aurora borealis. There was a large sunspot generating flares on the sun, and it was predicted that the increased activity might allow seeing the aurora as far south as San Diego (away from city lights). It's a fairly rare event down this way.

The red glow slowly changed to large patches of white with a greenish tinge, and then large vertical bright bands started appearing in the glow. The glow seemed to move from east to west across the horizon. The glow and the bands slowly dissipated, and for a while there was little activity. But around 10:30, very large rays started appearing against the dark sky, and eventually they would stretch from near the northern horizon to directly overhead. The western edges of these large bands of light would sometimes flare up brightly and then quickly fade, and an individual ray would appear and disappear in a matter of minutes, with new rays appearing nearby. The bands emanated from various places on the horizon at various angles, so the effect was different than the rays from the setting or rising sun. All of the activity faded out by 11 PM, and we didn't see anything else by the time we went to bed at midnight.

We didn't see anything Saturday night, but there was a lot of cloud cover and the moon was farther up from the horizon adding to the general background light. So we don't know if there was a display that was obscured.