AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live on Aug. 13 to discuss what it was like getting to record the aurora borealis for a second time this year, in addition to the historic eclipse.
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00:00From the Eclipse to the Northern Lights, AccuWeather meteorologist Tony Laubach has
00:04captured some incredible images this year, some of these memorable events, and he joins us now
00:09from Northern Colorado to talk about his latest capture from Sunday. Tony, this was pretty exciting.
00:17Yeah, Jeff, it's something kind of odd. I never really considered myself a space weather chaser,
00:23but this year has certainly kept me on my toes in terms of the events and the spontaneity
00:28of that, and that kind of happened again this past Sunday. You've been seeing a lot of the
00:32images on social media of the Northern Lights. We had a show, certainly not as prolific as it was
00:38back in May, but it certainly was one that got a lot of people out the door, myself included.
00:42Obviously, just getting back from my trip tracking Hurricane Debbie and was actually at home in my
00:47pajamas when I started seeing the social media reports fly up, so I grabbed my cameras and ran
00:52about an hour or so up the road and set up, and of course, on top of the Northern Lights,
00:57we had the meteor shower, which was something I also wasn't aware of. In fact, looking at a lot
01:02of the images you're seeing right now, we talk about the Northern Lights, how they're not very
01:06visible to the naked eye, and a lot of the meteors that were in the images weren't either, so you're
01:11really relying on the technology to show those, and when I got back home, started looking through
01:16the pictures, I was amazed how many frames had some of those meteor streaks in it, so it was
01:22certainly an exciting night on Sunday. That's really cool. Tony, you've seen so many amazing
01:27sights this year, so which has been your favorite?
01:33Well, obviously, the notable one this year was the big eclipse that we had in April, but really,
01:38it had to be the May Aurora Borealis, that big show that we had there back in May. I had just
01:44finished a chase trip, actually. We were driving back that Friday from Kansas City, drove all the
01:50way back to my house in Denver, got home, was unloading, started to hear the rumors about how
01:55we were supposed to get this big Aurora show, and I hadn't really done a lot of these, so I was kind
02:01of on a whim, and I kind of decided, you know what? What's another five hours drive? So, got
02:05home, took a shower, and headed five hours north to Gillette, and was treated to, honestly, Jeff,
02:11one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The eclipse is something else, and it was cool
02:16this year, but it was the anticipation. We knew it was coming. These were so spontaneous. I had
02:22no idea what it was in for. I'd never really seen the northern lights, and then to not only capture
02:27the images that I did, but I kind of mentioned it was hard to see this last one. These, you could
02:33see these coming from basically right over top of me, and then just surrounding us on both sides. To
02:38be able to see that in person was just the most unbelievable experience. That's really cool, Tony.
02:43I'm so glad that you had those experiences. We're able to share them with us as the recipients of
02:48some of that good stuff out there.