The Northern Lights will be visible in fewer states than originally anticipated. Will you still be able to see them?

The Northern Lights are expected to be seen in a handful of states on Wednesday, July 12 and Thursday, July 13, but in fewer places than in originally intended.

The aurora borealis these days will be “active,” according to the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, which initially expected activity to be high.

Weather permitting, parts of Alaska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine, as well as parts of Canada, are expected to see the Northern Lights on Wednesday and Thursday.

Last week, the institute predicted the display would be visible in 17 states over those two days: Washington, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and Massachusetts on July 12and Alaska, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Vermont e Maryland on July 13.

The institute told CBS News it originally predicted a moderate solar storm, which causes the dazzling phenomenon.

“Sun features that produce activity like this typically last 1-3 months, so active conditions were expected to repeat this week,” a representative from the institute told CBS News via email. “However, now that the predicted activity is less than three days into the future, we can see that the solar features that produced the previous activity have actually declined over the past month. This means that the previously predicted high levels of activity are now considered much less likely.

NOAA also initially forecast high activity this week and then downgraded the forecast. Solar wind from coronal holes in the sun they flow towards Earth and have a magnetic reaction that causes the aurora borealis, also called the northern lights, according to NASA.

Bryan Brasher, a project manager at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told CBS News that one coronal hole in particular had previously exhibited elevated activity, so meteorologists expected it to do so again.

“When this particular coronal hole came back into view, meaning we could see it and analyze it, it was clear it had diminished and we adjusted our forecast accordingly,” Brasher told CBS News via email.

The scale for measuring these geomagnetic storms is called the “G scale,” ranging from a minor storm at G1 to an extreme storm at G5. The original forecast that got media attention was at G2, but NOAA recently lowered the forecast to G1 and then lowered it back below the G scale, Brasher said.

Brasher said a G3 or G4 storm would be needed to see the northern lights from the mid-latitude states. “For example, we had a G4 storm in late March and again in late April that made the aurora visible as far south as Arizona and Oklahoma,” she said.

The best time to see the lights is when the sky is clear and dark, according to the institute. They’re most visible near the equinox, or the longest days of sunlight of the year that occur in spring and fall. Auroras usually occur every 27 days and come from solar storms.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an animated forecast of the movement of the lights and says the best time to see them is within an hour or two of midnight, usually between 10pm and 2am local time.

During average activity, the lights are usually visible in Alaska, Canada, and Scandinavian countries such as Greenland and Iceland during average activity, and late February to early April is usually the best time to see them in Alaska.