Will I See / United States / Seattle

Will I see the northern lights in Seattle tonight?

Tonight in Seattle

Probably not

Clouds and quiet aurora activity (Kp 1.3 forecast, 7.1 needed here) both work against you tonight.

Updated 7 min agoUpdates every 10 min
0%chance at the best hour tonight
52.5°magnetic latitude
Kp 7.1needed here
12 hdark hours tonight
24% litmoon

Hour by hour tonight

chance %cloud %Kp forecast● moon up
HourChanceCloudKpMoon

Loading tonight's hours…

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

Get an email when tonight looks good in Seattle

The northern lights reach Seattle 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.

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Planning a trip to Seattle?

Auroras in Seattle need a geomagnetic storm (about Kp 7.1). 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 7.1 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 Seattle 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.

2015none
2016none
2017none
2018none
2019none
2020none
20211 night
  • 3 Nov Kp 7.7
2022none
2023none
20242 nights
  • 10 May Kp 9
  • 10 Oct Kp 7.7
20252 nights
  • 15 Apr Kp 7.3
  • 31 May Kp 7.7

A "night you could have seen them" = at least one hour that was dark, mostly clear and with Kp at or above the Kp 7.1 that Seattle 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 Seattle with more good nights a year.

Jasper

10/yr
good nights a year (Seattle: under 1)660 km away · Kp 4.6 needed

Banff

6/yr
good nights a year (Seattle: under 1)630 km away · Kp 5.1 needed

Glacier National Park

2/yr
good nights a year (Seattle: under 1)650 km away · Kp 6 needed

Vancouver

1/yr
good nights a year (Seattle: under 1)200 km away · Kp 6.5 needed

Seattle northern lights: questions

Rarely. Seattle sits at 52.5° magnetic latitude, so auroras need about Kp 7.1, 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 7.1. We worked that out from Seattle's magnetic latitude (52.5°) 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 Seattle, add the sun and moon, and score each hour of tonight. The verdict is the best hour. How it works explains the calibration.