Aurora Forecast: Northern Lights Tonight

It depends on where you are and what the solar wind does in the next few hours. Search your city above for a live verdict that combines geomagnetic activity, your cloud forecast, moonlight, and darkness, updated every couple of minutes from NOAA's real-time feeds.

Kp measures global geomagnetic disturbance on a 0–9 scale, in 3-hour blocks. Higher Kp pushes the auroral oval toward the equator, making aurora visible farther south. But Kp alone is a blunt instrument: it lags in time and says nothing about your clouds or darkness. That's why we also watch the solar wind while it's still 930,000 miles away: it tells us what's coming 30–60 minutes before Kp reflects it.

A night-mode photo collects light for several seconds; your eye refreshes many times per second. That long exposure, plus a sensor that keeps its color sensitivity in the dark when your eye doesn't, reveals sub-visual aurora. From mid-latitudes, camera-only aurora is the most common kind, which is why every forecast here gives two verdicts.

Solar Cycle 25 reached its maximum in 2024–2025 and remains highly active. The declining phase of a solar cycle historically produces the most severe geomagnetic storms, including events strong enough to push aurora into the mid and southern US.