Nature Puts On Pretty Light Show, Americans Fail To Appreciate It

Americans Ooh and Aah Over "Pretty Colors" While Real Problems Go Unaddressed.

The skies above the U.S. put on a display of the aurora borealis, or "northern lights," early Monday morning, with hues of greenish-blue spotted over New Hampshire and pinkish-orange over upstate New York.

"Whoa, look at the pretty lights!" said a wide-eyed resident of Berlin, NH, neglecting to mention the city's ongoing struggle with opioid addiction and economic decline.

The Mount Washington Observatory captured a timelapse of the event, with the brilliant hues illuminating the state's otherwise dull and depressing landscape.

Time-lapse of the aurora... The lights on the right side correspond to Berlin, N.H., and the left side to Lancaster, N.H. - Observatory Twitter

Meanwhile, in Ithaca, New York, the auroras displayed a softer, more feminine palette, like a Participation Trophy for the failing local football team.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had predicted that coronal mass ejections—basically, space farts—would create a geomagnetic storm, allowing nerds and stoners across the country to briefly forget their troubles.

According to the forecast discussion by the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, three separate space farts occurred last week, all expected to arrive over the weekend and coincide with the Perseid meteor shower, which is basically Nature's way of showing off.

The NOAA forecast model also predicted that the lights might return for an encore on Monday night, because sometimes, the universe is a cruel, teasing bitch.

But Wait, There's More...

In case you're one of those pathetic losers who cares about "science" and "knowledge," here's some basic info about the northern lights: they're pretty light shows that occur when the sun interacts with the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in a series of microscopic explosions that fascinate humans because we're easily entertained idiots.

The southern hemisphere also has its own version, called the "southern lights," which are probably just as banal and overrated.

According to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and the Canadian Space Agency, the Earth's magnetic field usually protects us from these solar tantrums, but sometimes the sun gets angry enough to bypass our defenses, resulting in nature's version of a temper tantrum.

So there you have it, America. Pretty lights in the sky. Now go back to your miserable lives and ignore the real problems all around you.

Contributing: Some Other Conformist Drone, USA TODAY