Waves of color filled the Colorado night sky Friday as the Northern Lights lit up most of the globe in a phenomenon only seen once every two decades or more, according to space weather experts.

Who saw the aurora borealis last night? Some of our deputies were lucky enough to see the light show while on patrol last night. We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful place. Show us your aurora borealis photos. pic.twitter.com/QMB3IEmJtt

— BoulderCountySheriff (@BldrCOSheriff) May 11, 2024

“We had reports all the way down to south Florida and Puerto Rico,” said Mike Bettwy, operations chief for the Space Weather Prediction Center. “The aurora was pretty widespread across much of the globe. You’re looking at only every 20 to 25 years that it would be this widespread.”

A solar outburst and severe geomagnetic storm ramped up the aurora borealis, Bettwy said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a severe, G4 geomagnetic storm watch — the second highest on the scale — for the first time since since January 2005 on Thursday.

One perk of working the graveyard shift? Catching the #NorthernLights here in Wheat Ridge 🤩 pic.twitter.com/5xgVA0EAyQ

— Wheat Ridge Police (@WheatRidgePD) May 11, 2024

Space weather officials warned of at least five coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — pulses of plasma and other sun material — headed to Earth this weekend. The fastest CMEs can reach Earth from the Sun in 15 to 18 hours, and slower CMEs can take several days to arrive, space weather officials said.

As the CMEs pass through Earth’s atmosphere, they increase aurora activity, Bettwy said. The CMEs that arrived Friday afternoon and caused Friday night’s unusually bright light show are now passing out of the atmosphere.

“That puts us in a little bit of a lull,” he said. “We will see some aurora tonight, probably even here in Colorado we’ll see some, but not to the extent of last night.”

From Castle Rock #AuroraBorealis #cowx pic.twitter.com/dkxk0s4VHy

— Brian Force (@ColorfulCOAg) May 11, 2024

That just means Saturday is the least exciting day of the weekend — bright and intense Northern Lights to match Friday’s energy will return Sunday, Bettwy said.

Additional solar flares and CMEs ejected from the sun Saturday morning and late Friday night will arrive in Earth’s atmosphere Sunday afternoon, ramping the geomagnetic storm back up and returning the Northern Lights to Friday’s vividness and reach Sunday night.

“The storm will wind down after Sunday,” Bettwy said. “There’s a chance that it could remain relatively stormy Monday into Tuesday, so I wouldn’t rule out seeing the lights Monday night as well.”

There have been many times I’ve stood in awe under the sky on the PNG and last night was no exception. Absolutely breathtaking!#noco #weldcountymagic @usfsarp #Auroraborealis #NorthernLights #colorado pic.twitter.com/hOS3GgxWkM

— Jennifer Finch (@j3nf1nch) May 11, 2024

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“One tip we share with people is if they can’t see the aurora, to take a couple photos with their phone and look that way,” Bettwy said. “You might pick up an aurora where you can’t see it. The lights travel on an infrared wavelength that our phone cameras process better than our eyes do.”

Unfortunately, it’s up to the fickle Colorado weather if skies are clear enough to see the lights.

Scattered rain showers and thunderstorms, as well as cloudy overlays, could block the aurora borealis from view Saturday and Sunday, according to National Weather Service forecasters. Those looking to see the next wave of lights might have more luck up by the Colorado-Wyoming border.

I never thought I’d be able to see the northern lights from Colorado pic.twitter.com/W5EB4TIhER

— charles (@spacecowbutch) May 11, 2024

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Colorado is still facing a property tax crisis of historic proportions.

Runaway growth in property values caused by a lack of housing supply, growing demand from population increases, and 20-years’ worth of cheap money policy from the Federal Reserve have caused a perfect storm of escalating home values. As home assessed values grow so do taxes triggering property tax increases in all corners of our state.

Just how significant is this year’s property tax increase? An economist at the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business warned that new property tax costs to homeowners could impact consumer spending and cause an economic slowdown.

For the fourth time in as many years, the Colorado legislature has enacted a complicated new law intended to address this problem.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that these Golden Dome political compromises have continued to miss the mark.

Last year, the legislature’s grand agreement on property tax was Proposition HH, a slick-sounding plan that repackaged refunds already owed to taxpayers and called them property tax relief. At the same time, the plan grabbed an even larger sum of taxpayer refunds to spend on public education. While clever, the plan didn’t stand up to scrutiny — there was no real tax relief in it — and the voters defeated HH in a landslide.

This year, the legislature is back with a different inside-the-Capitol deal. While it is better than Proposition HH, and we credit those who fought to get some property tax relief on the business side, the package is still a woefully inadequate response for homeowners being crushed by soaring property taxes.

Rather than materially reducing taxes that homeowners pay, this year’s version of a grand bargain actually increases the total effective property tax rate from 6.3% this year to 6.8%. For the property taxes paid to our schools, the legislature’s agreement would increase the property tax rate even more — to 7.1%.

As with Proposition HH last year, this year’s agreement is a blatant attempt to dress-up an education tax increase in the clothes of property tax relief. It’s insincere. If the legislature wants to increase taxes for our schools, all it must do is ask the voters. To come back with a different variation of the same ploy that voters rejected less than one year ago is equal parts disappointing and disingenuous.

This is only the beginning of the problems with the property tax agreement.

The agreement purports to put a cap on property tax collections at 5.5%. The problem is that the limit wouldn’t apply to local government borrowing or debt, it wouldn’t apply to many (and maybe even most) districts who have already raised their property tax limits, and it would do little to slow the surging increases caused by growing home values.

Here again, it looks like the legislature is trying to snooker the public into believing they implemented a 5.5% cap when what they really enacted was a property tax cap riddled with loopholes and exceptions.

Other concerns with the legislative deal are many — notably, the deal takes us down the road of taxing homes worth more than $700,000 as if they were mansions owned by millionaires.  In many parts of the state, a $700,000 home is below the median cost.

One good aspect of the agreement is that it would reduce the state’s commercial property taxes, a badly needed step after the Gallagher Amendment punished businesses with higher property taxes for decades. But even this raises a question: Why would the legislature address the impacts of soaring property taxes for businesses but ignore those same impacts on everyday homeowners?

For all these reasons, we are enthusiastic supporters of ballot measures that would legitimately reduce property taxes and in a way that balances the legitimate needs of state and local governments. The business community has stuck to its guns in demanding sensible property tax relief, and the voters will get the chance to deliver that this November.

Some interest groups claim that the modest property tax cuts in the ballot measures would cause budget calamity. This is not true. Reducing the rate of growth in state and local budgets is not a cut, a fact that savvy Colorado voters will recognize immediately.

What’s more, these ballot measures actually prevent state government from cutting public education, and the initiatives would require the state of Colorado to fund local services like firefighters, water, and local social safety net programs funded by property taxes.

The truth is, we can implement meaningful property tax relief and fund the government services the public needs.

Tim Foster, an attorney at Coleman & Quigley, is the former President of Colorado Mesa University  and Director of Colorado Department of Higher Education. He also served as the Majority Leader of the Colorado House of Representatives. Jan Kulmann, a Professional Engineer, is in her second term as the Mayor of Thornton. She also serves as vice chair of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council and is a member of the North I-25 Coalition.

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MINNEAPOLIS — You could see this kind of night coming from here to, well, Denver.

With their season and 2023 championship defense essentially on the line, the Nuggets responded in this surprisingly one-sided Western Conference semifinal Game 3 with force and conviction. Whether or not the series will take a drastic turn will be determined Sunday (8 ET, TNT).

But there’s at least a sense of suspense after the Nuggets won Game 3 breezily and showed plenty of flex and, well, desperate unwillingness to fall three games down. It was a blowout from the jump, with the Nuggets keeping a double-digit lead for much of the game and winning by 27 points at the buzzer.

There was plenty of Jamal Murray and shot-making from the Nuggets and lots of shoddy stretches at both rims by the Wolves. As a result, Minnesota lost for the first time in seven games in these playoffs as their lead in this series was cut in half by a dominant and determined Denver response.

It was the largest Game 3 margin of victory by a team that dropped the first two games at home in postseason history, and especially impressive coming off a 26-point Game 2 loss.

Here are five takeaways from the Nuggets’ 117-90 win, and a series that’s now 2-1 Minnesota:

1. Murray in a hurry to respond

The Target Center fans booed Murray right from the introductions, mainly because he was actually in the introductions.

More than a few were unhappy that Murray was allowed to play at all; he dodged a suspension (but not a fine) from the league office for throwing items on the floor in Game 2.

Without Murray, the Nuggets don’t win this game. That’s because this was the best result from Murray throughout these playoffs. Until Friday, he was mostly reckless and inefficient — even in the Laker series when he hit big game-deciding jumpers.

Murray was obviously on a mission to change all that in Game 3. Lucky for him, the three off-days after Game 2 helped his sore calf.

Consequently, Murray was frisky from the first quarter, zipping between double-teams, stepping back for jumpers, getting 18 of his 24 points by halftime, and taking control of the game.

Murray now has only one off-day before Game 4, so the calf muscle could once again be an issue.

“This is probably the best it’s felt going into a game,” he said, “But it tightened up a bit at the end.”

2. Minnesota makes a return to earth

Really, these playoffs represented the best the Wolves could offer. Their defense was historic, Anthony Edwards volcanic, and their depth simply wore down the Suns in the first round and, through the first two games of this semifinal, the Nuggets.

But this was a not-so-welcome-back to normalcy for a team that, while certainly solid and a contender, came with flaws. And those issues haunted the Wolves in Game 3, mainly on the offensive end.

Minnesota couldn’t shoot straight from deep, failed to match the Nuggets’ sense of urgency and never generated any traction to battle back from its first real deficit in the playoffs. Furthermore, the sellout crowd was never a factor, and fans began beating traffic home halfway through the fourth quarter.

“I haven’t seen a team win 16 straight in the playoffs,” said Wolves center Karl-Anthony Towns. But, he added, “We just have to be a better version of ourselves. We weren’t tonight.”

Other than Towns, the Wolves shot 5-for-28 on 3s, scored just 41 points in the first half and allowed the Nuggets to roam free offensively — a near-reversal from Minnesota’s decisive Game 2 win.

“Our decision making wasn’t there, general movement wasn’t there,” said Wolves coach Chris Finch. “Not a lot of good things on either end of the floor.”

3. Nuggets crack Wolves’ code with deep shooting

A game ago the Nuggets were completely flummoxed by the Wolves’ pressing and trapping. It stripped away everything Denver does well — especially shooting.

That changed abruptly on Friday. The Nuggets’ aim was true all night; they made nearly half of their 3-point shots and connected on 54% overall for the game, especially impressive given the quality of defense usually played by the Wolves.

The beauty of the Nuggets is their calm and deliberate pace, fostered by a sense of familiarity and ability to find the open man. This is a product of an organically-grown team — an offense that works like a Swiss timepiece — run by Nikola Jokic, perhaps the finest passing big man in history.

None of this was evident last Monday when the Nuggets unraveled, shot 35% overall and 30% from deep while looking nothing like the team that raised the trophy a year ago.

But that was then. One game can change the flow of a series suddenly, and in that sense, the Nuggets aren’t taking too much from Game 3.

“We’re far from doing anything to celebrate,” said Nuggets coach Michael Malone.

4. McDaniels’ fouls were a factor

It was a subtle development involving a player who seems to work in the shadows, and it helped the game get away from the Wolves.

When swingman Jaden McDaniels developed early foul trouble, the Wolves were stripped of arguably their most important defender. That’s how much McDaniels’ value has grown, not only in this series, but all season, actually.

McDaniels is tasked with being a speed bump for Murray, and through two games he did that job well — Murray never drew blood from the Wolves. Then came Friday. Murray brought the energy, and so did McDaniels, though maybe too much.

His fouls limited McDaniels to only seven first-half minutes, and by then, the Nuggets and Murray were in control, up 15 points and cruising.

5. Nuggets regain swagger

This 48-minute performance by the Nuggets looked familiar. As in, it looked like last year’s team that had few hiccups on the way to a championship.

That team hadn’t appeared in the 2024 playoffs, until now. Even though the Nuggets swept the Lakers in the first round, they trailed at halftime of each game, then scrambled to win all four.

The first two games in this series were forgettable, especially Game 2, when their body language was foul in a 26-point loss.

The Nuggets were consistent in this respect: they remained tough on the road. They’re now 8-4, stretching back to last postseason.

So they reached back for a 2023 throwback and it agreed with them Friday. The ball moved, Jokic went for 24-14-9, Murray bounced off screens and defenders and the Nuggets kept the Wolves on a treadmill.

“That was Denver Nuggets basketball,” Malone said.

Malone cited his team’s rally from a pair of 3-1 deficits in the bubble as proof of its mental toughness, and also spliced together chatter of Denver doom over the last three days by TV talk shows as motivation.

“Our guys answered the bell,” Malone said. “They still believe.”

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Shaun Powell has covered the NBA for more than 25 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.

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