A woman in Suffolk was astonished after seeing what she thought were the Northern Lights on display – but things were not as they appeared.
2024 has been a hectic year for Brits, with Labour winning the UK General Election for the first time in 14 years, England failing to win a trophy in international football, and, perhaps most crucially, the entire country enthralled by Northern Lights-mania.
The Northern Lights – or aurora borealis if you’re feeling fancy – are typically only visible in the far north of Europe, bringing a large number of tourists to Norway and Iceland each year, whereas in the United Kingdom, those famous wiggly green lines are typically limited to the northern edges of Scotland.
But not this year.
Because the sun is at the’maximum’ of its 11-year solar cycle, geomagnetic activity has reached an all-time high this year, allowing people to see the lights as far south as London.
However, not all views of the night sky were created equal, so for every magnificent photo of the aurora captured in Sunderland and Wolverhampton, there were some pretty convincing counterfeit lights.
This is just what occurred to 56-year-old Dee Harrison, who couldn’t believe her eyes while driving to work one morning in Suffolk.
Dee was driving towards the village of Bramford in the early hours of the morning when she noticed a red light in the sky and pulled over to take a few images, which she then published to her local Facebook group.
“Think it’s an Aurora, never seen one before,” she captioned the photo.
However, everything was not as it looked, as Dee and other readers on the page later discovered that the red glow was caused by LED units employed by Suffolk Sweet Tomatoes to encourage vegetable development.
The catfish left Dee understandably devastated, as she subsequently told the BBC: “I was a little sad because I thought I was up early watching this aurora and I had it all to myself.
“I have driven that way for over two years and this was the first time I had seen it – it’s funny how I haven’t noticed it before.”
However, Dee shouldn’t be too upset about the mix-up because she isn’t the only one who has been fooled by renegade lights. Two students thought they’d stumbled onto a stunning light show… only to discover it was their local Premier Inn.
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