Will I See / United Kingdom / Glasgow

Will I see the northern lights in Glasgow tonight?

Tonight in Glasgow

Probably not

Clouds and quiet aurora activity (Kp 3.7 forecast, 7 needed here) both work against you tonight.

Updated just nowUpdates every 10 min
0%chance at the best hour tonight
52.8°magnetic latitude
Kp 7needed here
12 hdark hours tonight
18% litmoon

Hour by hour tonight

chance %cloud %Kp forecast● moon up
HourChanceCloudKpMoon

Loading tonight's hours…

Times are local (Europe/London). Only hours with the sun below −6° are shown. Kp forecast: NOAA SWPC. Clouds: MET Norway.

Get an email when tonight looks good in Glasgow

The northern lights reach Glasgow only in big storms. We'll tell you when one lines up with a clear, dark night. At most one email a night, one click to stop.

We use your address only for these alerts and confirm it first. Privacy

Planning a trip to Glasgow?

Auroras in Glasgow need a geomagnetic storm (about Kp 7). In 2015–2025 that lined up with a clear, dark sky on 5 nights in 11 years, so treat a sighting here as a bonus, not a plan.

Trip odds here round to zero in almost every week, so we don't chart them. Your best bet is to watch the Kp index: when a storm reaches about Kp 7 and the sky above is clear, this page's live forecast will say so.

Every night you could have seen them, 2015–2025

5 nights in 11 years were clear and dark in Glasgow while auroras reached far enough, by our estimate from NASA cloud data and the Kp record. The strongest: 10 May 2024 (Kp 9). Most came near the solar maximum of 2024–2025.

20151 night
  • 7 Oct Kp 7.3
2016none
2017none
2018none
2019none
2020none
2021none
2022none
2023none
20243 nights
  • 10 May Kp 9
  • 16 Sep Kp 7.3
  • 10 Oct Kp 8.7
20251 night
  • 11 Nov Kp 8.7

A "night you could have seen them" = at least one hour that was dark, mostly clear and with Kp at or above the Kp 7 that Glasgow needs. Look north, low on the horizon, away from town lights: the northern lights here are usually a glow that a phone camera picks up better than your eyes.

Better odds nearby

Places within 700 km of Glasgow with more good nights a year.

Tórshavn

11/yr
good nights a year (Glasgow: under 1)700 km away · Kp 3.9 needed

Shetland

5/yr
good nights a year (Glasgow: under 1)510 km away · Kp 5 needed

Orkney

2/yr
good nights a year (Glasgow: under 1)360 km away · Kp 5.5 needed

Caithness

2/yr
good nights a year (Glasgow: under 1)310 km away · Kp 5.7 needed

Glasgow northern lights: questions

Rarely. Glasgow sits at 52.8° magnetic latitude, so auroras need about Kp 7, which means a geomagnetic storm. Our record (2015–2025) shows 5 nights in 11 years with a clear, dark sky and auroras strong enough to see.

There is no reliable season: auroras this far south come with strong geomagnetic storms, which can happen in any dark month. Watch the live forecast and the Kp index instead of planning a trip around them.

About Kp 7. We worked that out from Glasgow's magnetic latitude (52.8°) with a rule calibrated against the Finnish Meteorological Institute's sighting statistics. Look north, low on the horizon, away from town lights.

Every 10 minutes we take NOAA's Kp forecast and MET Norway's hourly cloud forecast for Glasgow, add the sun and moon, and score each hour of tonight. The verdict is the best hour. How it works explains the calibration.