Aurora forecast guide
Where, when and how to see the Northern Lights — backed by NOAA Kp data for the best viewing destinations.
Top aurora destinations: at a glance
Cities ranked by typical Kp threshold for visible aurora. Click any city for a 14-day forecast.
How to forecast aurora reliably
The Kp index is the headline number every aurora chaser learns first, but it tells only part of the story. Kp is a planetary average over three-hour windows, derived from a global network of magnetometers, and it lags the actual storm by about an hour. By the time NOAA reports Kp 7, the auroral oval has often already expanded south. Use Kp as a rough threshold for your geomagnetic latitude, then refine the forecast with real-time solar wind data.
The single most predictive signal for the next 30–60 minutes is the Bz component of the interplanetary magnetic field in GSM coordinates. When Bz turns strongly negative (south), reconnection opens the magnetosphere and energy pours into the auroral zone. NASA's DSCOVR satellite at the L1 Lagrange point streams Bz, solar wind speed and density every minute, giving roughly a 30-minute lead time before the front reaches Earth. A Bz below −10 nT with a solar wind speed above 500 km/s almost always lights up the sky at high latitudes.
For multi-day planning, look at the Bartels 27-day cycle. The Sun rotates once every 27 days as seen from Earth, so coronal holes and active regions tend to face us again on a near-monthly cadence. If a strong storm hit on a given date, mark the same day of the next Bartels rotation — recurrent high-speed streams from coronal holes often repeat for two or three rotations in a row. NOAA's 27-day outlook and SWPC's F10.7 trend chart together give a usable 4-week horizon.
When is the best aurora season?
Aurora is visible year-round at high geomagnetic latitudes, but you need genuinely dark skies to see it. That rules out the polar summer — between mid-April and late August the sky above 60° latitude never gets astronomically dark. The practical season runs from late September to late March, with peak conditions around the equinoxes (Russell-McPherron effect makes geomagnetic activity statistically stronger in March and September). For mid-latitude cities like Aberdeen or Daxing'anling, only December and January nights are long enough to catch a big storm overhead.
We are currently near the maximum of Solar Cycle 25, which peaked around 2024–2025 and remains strongly active into 2026. That means more frequent X-class flares, more coronal mass ejections, and aurora events that occasionally reach geomagnetic latitudes as low as 40°. The window will gradually narrow over the next three to four years as the cycle declines toward solar minimum, so the 2026–2027 winters are likely the last reliably good ones for mid-latitude observers before the next maximum around 2035.
Check the forecast for your city
Find your nearest aurora-relevant city and open its 14-day Kp, cloud and moon forecast.
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The Kp index is the headline number every aurora chaser learns first, but it tells only part of the story. Kp is a planetary average over three-hour windows, derived from a global network of magnetometers, and it lags the actual storm by about an hour. By the time NOAA reports Kp 7, the auroral oval has often already expanded south. Use Kp as a rough threshold for your geomagnetic latitude, then refine the forecast with real-time solar wind data.
The single most predictive signal for the next 30–60 minutes is the Bz component of the interplanetary magnetic field in GSM coordinates. When Bz turns strongly negative (south), reconnection opens the magnetosphere and energy pours into the auroral zone. NASA's DSCOVR satellite at the L1 Lagrange point streams Bz, solar wind speed and density every minute, giving roughly a 30-minute lead time before the front reaches Earth. A Bz below −10 nT with a solar wind speed above 500 km/s almost always lights up the sky at high latitudes.
For multi-day planning, look at the Bartels 27-day cycle. The Sun rotates once every 27 days as seen from Earth, so coronal holes and active regions tend to face us again on a near-monthly cadence. If a strong storm hit on a given date, mark the same day of the next Bartels rotation — recurrent high-speed streams from coronal holes often repeat for two or three rotations in a row. NOAA's 27-day outlook and SWPC's F10.7 trend chart together give a usable 4-week horizon.
Aurora is visible year-round at high geomagnetic latitudes, but you need genuinely dark skies to see it. That rules out the polar summer — between mid-April and late August the sky above 60° latitude never gets astronomically dark. The practical season runs from late September to late March, with peak conditions around the equinoxes (Russell-McPherron effect makes geomagnetic activity statistically stronger in March and September). For mid-latitude cities like Aberdeen or Daxing'anling, only December and January nights are long enough to catch a big storm overhead.
We are currently near the maximum of Solar Cycle 25, which peaked around 2024–2025 and remains strongly active into 2026. That means more frequent X-class flares, more coronal mass ejections, and aurora events that occasionally reach geomagnetic latitudes as low as 40°. The window will gradually narrow over the next three to four years as the cycle declines toward solar minimum, so the 2026–2027 winters are likely the last reliably good ones for mid-latitude observers before the next maximum around 2035.