Northern Lights Tonight

As an aurora enthusiast, here’s the main things I look for at a glance on this page:

1. The green donut-ring aurora forecast simulation provided by NOAA (I’m in Alaska, USA so that’s our go-to). Great quick visual to show if auroras are tame or wild.
2. BsubZ reading. CRITICAL. You just want that to be a negative number, period. A negative polarity (-Bz) solar wind impacting the positive polarity Earth (that’s us, the big bar magnet in the sky) causes a coupling to occur and the energy flows through us. Negative & Positive cancels out allowing charged particles to stream toward Earth and blammo, 40-to-300 miles above our heads a wonder of the universe happens ~ in color ~ the AURORA!!!
3. KP index is the next thing I look at, the bigger the better!!!
4. Propagating sunspots, check out the black & white image of the sun in the lower part of this page. That’s a lot of sunspots! The sun is definitely ramping into solar maximum phase, which should mean more aurora activity.

On any given night, I/we/you may or may not catch an aurora display due to an infinite amount of variables so, to me, it’s all about the hunt.