Blogging The Chase - October 10, 2025
- Eric Bleicher
- Oct 13
- 2 min read
We're anticipating snow any day now, and as is the norm in Southcentral Alaska in the fall, it's cloudy more often than not. This last week was again no different - but, there was a chance out east in an area I haven't shot yet. We intended to go up toward Paxson and camp (about 80-90 miles north of Glennallen, around 250mi one way). The weather forecast had actually called for the area near Summit Lake / Isabel Pass to be good all night, and there was a chance for potentially enhanced activity due to a CIR leading into a high speed stream from a coronal hole.
Unfortunately, the weather looked much different when we made it to Glennallen after three hours or so on the road.
But, since we had good sky most of the way out, and knew another front was coming in behind us, we decided to work our way back from Glennallen and stop along the way.
We worked our way back to a community named Glacier View, which is in the vicinity of Matanuska Glacier. About 75 miles west of Glennallen, we had a handful of options to stop, and stuck with a pullout near Goober Lake.
We had a slight breeze, temperatures in the low
30s/high 20s, and no snow in the higher elevations.
We parked around 1015pm, and saw some faint aurora looking east/southeast. I can't stress enough how sitting on these faint arcs is crucial when chasing - this is representative of a substorm in its growth phase. Once you find an arc, it's worth waiting to see what happens every time.
Right around 11pm, one of those two arcs started to gain some steam, indicating the expansion phase in this substorm had begun.
This first arc hanging over the mountains was the first to go, and underneath the moon - working center to left - followed suit shortly after. The activity lasted about 20 minutes altogether.
Here's the product of that substorm from my angle! This was 399 frames over about 13min to produce a 17 second video.
One great resource for chasing and understanding what's happening on a larger scale are the GOES magnetometers.
Looking right, each line (blue / red) represent a coast of the Continental US (blue for west coast, red for east coast).
In the red box here, you'll see there's a large upward motion in the blue line - that's your indicator of expansion.
The sun continues to be active this week, with some potentially big flare players within striking range, and we saw a significant filament eruption off the eastern dim tonight as well. While the filament won't be earth directed, HUX-T does forecast two CMEs potentially enhancing activity late this week. As always, I'll monitor Earth weather and wait for solar wind to cross L1 to get back at it!
