CLEVELAND β After a spectacular light show with the Northern Lights illuminating the sky Monday night, more red and green lights were on full display Wednesday night. Those lights were *not* the Northern Lights...it was a "fake" aurora.
What did Ohioans see Wednesday night, and how does the weather play a major role in illuminating the sky during the fall?
Canadian greenhouses from Leamington, Ontario, were emitting light that traveled 60 miles across Lake Erie and lit up the night sky. That light was trapped and moved such a long distance because of the much colder weather that moved in through the day on Wednesday.
Light is one of the many types of waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. That spectrum includes radar and FM radio. This will become more important later on.
Light (and other types of waves) typically spreads and beams out to space under normal weather conditions, where the air is uniform. When a strong cold front pushes through, it is not a simple process this time of year. The warmer air remains above and pins the cold air down to the ground. This invisible temperature barrier is known as an inversion. These inversions can be so powerful that they trap waves at the ground, and they can travel very far.
Light is a higher frequency, and higher frequencies are not typically able to travel far. The fact that the red and green colors in the sky were visible from 60 miles away is very impressive. Radar and radio waves are lower frequencies and can travel even farther.
In addition to seeing light with the naked eye, people can see this inversion on the Power of 5 radar. This is more common on clear and cold fall nights falling a cold front, and the radar may look like it is raining everywhere. That is the individual radar waves leaving the beam and bouncing off the invisible inversion back down to the ground. That causes the waves to imitate raindrops even when there isn't a cloud in the sky.
And people can hear the inversion too. With FM radio, radio waves can travel even farther. The same night that light traveled 60 miles, radio waves from over 300 miles away traveled to Cleveland. Radio stations like WKSC-FM in Chicago were heard from Cleveland to Akron, like Andrew, a DXer in Akron, heard Wednesday night, at the same time the greenhouse lights were seen.
317-mile tropo, Chicago to Akron Ohio on the TEF6686 pic.twitter.com/Q9OfRccNl3
β Andrew π»πΆπΊπΈ (@StaticVoyager) October 2, 2025
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