Northern lights forecast for the place you are standing
Live chances for 11,998 towns and cities, worked out for each location: which direction to face, how high the aurora will appear, whether hills or town lights are in the way, and how often it has been seen there over 21 years.
What is Kp?
Quiet · Kp 2.7
Only under the auroral oval: northern Norway, Swedish and Finnish Lapland, Iceland, Alaska, northern Canada.
Best chances tonight
Featured destinations, ranked by tonight's best hour.
| Place | Chance | Best around | Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rovaniemi Finland | 92 | 00:00 | 0% |
| Inari Finland | 92 | 01:00 | 4% |
| Muonio village Finland | 92 | 01:00 | 8% |
| Levi Finland | 92 | 02:00 | 1% |
| Ylläs (Äkäslompolo) Finland | 92 | 01:00 | 2% |
| Saariselkä Finland | 92 | 02:00 | 7% |
| Luosto Finland | 92 | 00:00 | 3% |
| Kirkenes Norway | 92 | 01:00 | 20% |
Live sightings
Where visitors are reporting the aurora right now. A place climbs with every report and drops again as the reports age.
- …
Latest reports
The Kp scale in plain words
Kp is a 0–9 score for how strongly the Earth's magnetic field is being shaken by the solar wind. The higher it goes, the further from the poles the northern lights reach. Kp 0–2 is a quiet night; Kp 5 and above is a geomagnetic storm.
- Kp 0–2 Quiet next 24 h Only under the auroral oval: northern Norway, Swedish and Finnish Lapland, Iceland, Alaska, northern Canada.
- Kp 3 Unsettled Bright in the Arctic; low on the horizon in central Scandinavia and southern Iceland.
- Kp 4 Active Overhead in the Arctic; low in the north from southern Norway, Sweden, Finland and northern Scotland.
- Kp 5 Minor storm (G1) Scotland, southern Scandinavia, the Baltic states, the northern US states and southern Canada.
- Kp 6 Moderate storm (G2) Northern England, Denmark, northern Germany and Poland, the US Midwest — often clearer in photos than to the eye.
- Kp 7 Strong storm (G3) Most of the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Czechia; red glow in photos from France and the northern Alps.
- Kp 8 Severe storm (G4) Central Europe to the eye; red sky in photos from northern Italy, Spain, the Balkans and Turkey's Black Sea coast.
- Kp 9 Extreme storm (G5) Seen across Europe and the US; in photos as far south as the Mediterranean, Turkey and North Africa (May 2024).
Answers for your exact location
Your town's magnetic latitude, the direction of the auroral oval and the hills on your horizon decide what you will see. We calculate all three for every place.
21 years of real nights
Each night from 2005 to 2025 was checked for darkness, activity and cloud. That tells you which months work best where you are going.
See it before you go
Each place page draws the view towards the aurora — terrain included — and shows how high the lights rise at each Kp level.
Best odds in October
- Nuuk · 50% · Kp 0
- Coldfoot · 46% · Kp 0
- Talkeetna · 40% · Kp 0
- Ilulissat · 40% · Kp 0
- Vík í Mýrdal · 39% · Kp 0
- Kangerlussuaq · 38% · Kp 0
Total solar eclipse, 2 August 2027
Totality crosses 26 of the cities we track, from southern Spain to the Red Sea, lasting up to 6 min 26 s near Sohag.
Latest major storm
The most recent severe geomagnetic storm in our archive peaked on 10 October 2026 at Kp 7.3.