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Checking the NOAA OVATION feed

Glow, the aurora night log

Can you see the northern lights tonight?

Tonight NOAA's modeled oval does not reach 10% over central North America. Check your town below for its own cell.

OVATION 30 to 90 minute forecast, observed 10:13 UTC with a 93 minute lead. 52 northern cells read 10% or more.

Or search any town of 15,000 or more
Highest cell
10%
Oval over Europe
Under 10%
Places dark now
7 of 10
40°50°60°70°TromsøReykjavikFairbanksAnchorageYellowknifeSeattlePortlandDuluthBuffaloMinneapolis
OVATION 1 to 50%Above 50%Dipole latitude 50, 55, 60°Edge at 10%Edge minus 1000 km, SWPC best-case horizon

Select a point on the map, or focus it and use the arrow keys, to read its grid cell and the nearest Glow place.

Tonight's logbook

Ten featured places, read on this request. OVATION is the cell holding each town. Cloud is NWS skyCover for US towns and n/a elsewhere. The sparkline is the town's year of night on the 15th of each month.

PlaceOVATIONSky nowCivil duskCloudNight, Jan to Dec
FairbanksAlaska9%Dark20:0649%
AnchorageAlaska3%Dark20:1243%
SeattlePacific Northwest0%Dark19:1823%
MinneapolisUpper Midwest0%Dark19:222%
DuluthUpper Midwest0%Dark19:180%
Portland, MaineNortheast0%Light18:4841%
BuffaloNortheast0%Dark19:24100%
ReykjavikIceland0%Light19:40n/a
TromsøNorway0%Light19:01n/a
YellowknifeCanada6%Dark19:51n/a

Retrieved 10:23 UTC. Compare the 10 featured places

Aurora towns by country

1,218 towns in 21 countries, each with its storm level, dark season, cloud average and live OVATION cell. Pick a country, then a town.

All countries compared · Kp history since 1932

How Glow reads the sky

The OVATION cell

Can

Say how much aurora NOAA's model puts over a 1 degree cell, 30 to 90 minutes ahead, with the observation time.

Cannot

See your sky. It has no cloud, moon or city light, and it goes blank when the file is more than 2 hours old.

Darkness

Can

Give civil dusk and dawn, the sun at -6 degrees, for any coordinates and date, plus moon-up hours.

Cannot

Account for terrain, buildings or haze. A sky with no sunrise can still be twilight at noon.

Cloud

Can

Report NWS forecast sky cover for the grid square over a US point, current hour or the next 6 hours.

Cannot

Forecast outside the US. There, town pages show NASA POWER's 2001 to 2020 cloud average, never a stand-in forecast.

The three are shown side by side and never multiplied into one score, because each fails for its own reasons. Read darkness first, then the cell, then cloud. Every figure on the site either comes from one of these inputs with its timestamp, or is quoted from NOAA with a verified date on the sources ledger.

Tools

All tools and their data sources

Plan beyond tonight

Tonight's odds depend on live data. Everything else can be planned weeks ahead from two things that are fixed: where a town sits relative to the geomagnetic pole, and how dark its nights are. NOAA SWPC's rule of thumb puts the oval's edge near 66 degrees geomagnetic at Kp 0 and moves it about 2 degrees south per Kp step. Duluth, at the top of the lower 48 towns, needs about Kp 6 for that edge to sit overhead. Fairbanks needs Kp 1.

Darkness sets the season. SWPC says the midnight sun prevents aurora viewing at auroral latitudes in summer, and the far-north towns on Glow lose civil darkness for weeks around the June solstice. SWPC also says larger storms tend to come near the spring and fall equinoxes. The month pages combine both for each town, night by night, with the moon.

Start with the guides if the terms are new: Kp, the OVATION forecast and how dark it needs to be. Then pick dates with the month hubs and compare towns on the rankings.

Method and sources

The methodology gives every formula, threshold and cache rule: the 2 hour freshness limit, the 20 minute lead that separates forecast from Kp fallback, SunCalc's twilight angles and the IGRF-14 dipole. The sources ledger quotes each NOAA figure with the date it was last checked, 2026-09-30.