Well layered in wraps—or should I say, well wrapped in layers?—we walked across the Minto Bridges to New Edinburgh, at minus twenty-something degrees C around 10 o'clock last night, noticing the plumes of steam rising from chimneys and water pipe vents (manhole covers) in the road, but not from the solid Rideau River. The coming snow clouds were beginning to obscure the sky and gather on the south eastern horizon so that they reflected colour from the city lights. Moving away from the street lamps and looking straight up from Maple Island, though, we saw mysterious bright streaks like the reflection from laser beams, but broader, which I'm sure weren't wisps of under-lit cirrus cloud but a faint manifestation of the Northern Lights.
On the Space Weather website I see that someone in Sweden noticed the aurora last night as well, so perhaps we weren't imagining it. On previous occasions we've seen something similar over the riverside parks, beams of light like the struts of a dome, coming and going and tending to converge overhead.
When I came in I had frost all over my eyelashes.
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