At 2,962 meters above sea level, the Zugspitze summit is the highest point in Germany, but it is far from the southernmost, as boundary stone number 147 at Haldenwanger Eck in Oberallgäu is around 26 angular minutes further to the south. Nevertheless, it is still easier to see north from the Zugspitze summit, and what was seen there on Monday night is extremely rare in Bavaria.
Recordings of one Webcam of the Bavarian Zugspitzbahn show northern lights that usually occur in Scandinavia. The reddish glow can be seen particularly well in the picture that the lonely camera took at one o’clock in the morning. At four o’clock there is another reddish glow, well before dawn.
The fact that the northern lights can be seen even in the very south these days is due to the activity of the sun, which is heading towards its regular eleven-year high in the coming year. After plasma eruptions, charged particles from the sun hit the Earth’s magnetic field at high speed and indirectly stimulate air particles to glow.
There are also reports of northern lights in green, purple, yellow and red from Monday night from the north, for example from Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony.