Featured aurora towns

Answer

Of the 10 places, Reykjavik sits highest on the geomagnetic dipole at 68.8 degrees, and 5 have a dark season that never closes. Sort the table by any column; the live column reads the current NOAA grid.

68.8°

highest dipole latitude, Reykjavik

The 10 places

						No darkness	Cloud
Reykjavik64.1°N, Iceland	68.8°No storm (Kp 0)	17.0 h	10.5 h	269 d	...	May 17 to Jul 25	n/a
Yellowknife62.5°N, Canada	68.5°No storm (Kp 0)	16.6 h	10.6 h	280 d	...	May 25 to Jul 16	n/a
Tromsø69.6°N, Norway	67.5°No storm (Kp 0)	19.2 h	10.2 h	239 d	...	Apr 27 to Aug 14	n/a
Fairbanks64.8°N, Alaska	65.7°No storm (Kp 1)	17.2 h	10.4 h	266 d	...	May 13 to Jul 28	NWS
Anchorage61.2°N, Alaska	61.9°No storm (Kp 3)	16.3 h	10.6 h	290 d	...	Jun 2 to Jul 8	NWS
Duluth46.8°N, Upper Midwest	55.4°G1 or less	14.2 h	11.0 h	365 d	...	none	NWS
Minneapolis45.0°N, Upper Midwest	53.5°G3	14.0 h	11.0 h	365 d	...	none	NWS
Seattle47.6°N, Pacific Northwest	53.0°G3	14.3 h	11.0 h	365 d	...	none	NWS
Portland, Maine43.7°N, Northeast	52.9°G3	13.9 h	11.0 h	365 d	...	none	NWS
Buffalo42.9°N, Northeast	52.0°G3	13.8 h	11.0 h	365 d	...	none	NWS

Dipole latitude from IGRF-14. Night hours are civil night on the 15th in 2026. Dark season: days with at least 4 hours of civil night between 18:00 and 06:00. G levels are typical per NOAA SWPC and approximate on a centered dipole.

Why geographic latitude misleads

The auroral oval circles the geomagnetic pole, which the IGRF-14 dipole places in the Canadian Arctic. That shifts every town's effective latitude. Minneapolis, at 45.0N, reads 53.5 degrees on the dipole. Seattle, at 47.6N, reads 53.0. The town that is farther south on a globe sits closer to the oval.

Europe runs the other way. Tromsø, at 69.6N, reads 67.5 on the dipole, while Reykjavik at 64.1N reads 68.8. Reykjavik sits nearer the pole's meridian.

Choosing between high-latitude towns

For a trip, three columns matter most. Dipole latitude says how close the town sits to the oval on a quiet night. The December and March night columns say how many dark hours you get near the solstice and near the March equinox. The no-darkness column says when not to go at all.

Cloud is the input the table cannot settle. Glow reads a live NWS forecast for the 7 US towns only. Every place page also shows NASA POWER's 2001 to 2020 cloud average by month, which says what a month is usually like, not what tonight will bring.

To compare two towns in depth, use the comparison tool. Each place page adds the full-year night ribbon, a month table, the moon calendar and tonight's live logbook.

Regions, months and comparisons

The 10 towns fall into three groups. The two Alaska towns sit in SWPC's 60 to 75 degree band and get NWS cloud. The five lower 48 towns sit between 52 and 56 degrees on the dipole and depend on storms. Yellowknife, Reykjavik and Tromsø sit at or above the Kp 0 oval edge but lie outside NWS coverage. Each group has a region page with its towns side by side.

Every town also has a page for each month of the year: 120 pages that list every night's civil and astronomical darkness, moon-free minutes inside SWPC's 10 PM to 2 AM window, the new and full moon and how the month compares with the other nine towns. Click a month in any town's month table, or start from a month hub.

For the classic choices, such as Fairbanks or Yellowknife and Tromsø or Reykjavik, the comparison pages set two towns side by side on dipole latitude, darkness in every month and the no-darkness dates. The rankings order all 10 on one measure at a time.

Every town, by country

Beyond the 10 featured places, Glow tracks 0 towns from GeoNames, each with its own page.