Aurora forecast tonight in Seattle
Live northern lights outlook for Seattle, United States — from NOAA's Ovation model and planetary Kp forecast, updated every 15 minutes.
Tonight's verdict
Quiet for now
2%
local probability now
3.7
max Kp next 24h
Kp 5+
what Seattle needs
Activity looks low right now, but substorms flare with little warning. Check back after dark or watch the Kp trend.
Make the quiet useful: get a storm alert first · Film the aurora on iPhone · Aurora tonight
Updated 2026-09-25 09:17 UTC · NOAA SWPC Ovation Prime · Kp now 3.7
Kp forecast — next 24 hours
2.7
09:00
2.3
12:00
3.0
15:00
3.3
18:00
3.0
21:00
3.0
00:00
3.7
03:00
2.7
06:00
Times UTC · bright green = at/above the Kp 5 Seattle needs
Be ready before the next storm hits.
When you're finally standing in the cold under the night you've waited years for, there are no retakes — the sky does its show once and moves on. So pack the jacket, pack the thermos, and pack the one thing that makes the night eternal: the only iOS astrophotography app built for auroras. Long after the trip, you'll still have the display itself, moving, in 4K.
- ✦ Set it down and it arms itself
- ✦ 4K timelapse + a still from the session
- ✦ Aurora intelligence tunes every capture
- ✦ Tracks the aurora live — no extra app
- ✦ Apple Watch companion
- ✦ Pay once, own it forever
What it takes to see the aurora from Seattle
Seattle sits at 47.6°N geographic, but what decides an aurora is geomagnetic latitude — 53.1°N here. That means the northern lights need a real geomagnetic storm here, roughly Kp 5 or higher. By NOAA's published storm frequencies, Kp 5 is reached on roughly 81.8 nights a year averaged across the 11-year solar cycle — and the years just after solar maximum, where we are now, have historically delivered the cycle's strongest storms.
Kp 3 a camera catches itKp 5 visible to the eyeKp 7 overhead
Watching from Seattle: get clear of streetlights with an open northern horizon, give your eyes fifteen minutes to adapt, and concentrate on the hours around local midnight, when activity statistically peaks. The season runs from late August to mid-April, and activity climbs measurably around the equinoxes.
For comparison, Seattle needs about Kp 5; Vancouver, 198 km away, needs about Kp 4. On a marginal night that difference decides who sees anything.
One rule every chaser learns the hard way: the camera sees it first. An arc that reads as grey haze to your eyes is already green in a one-second exposure, so point a camera at the northern sky before deciding there is nothing there — one tap in Aurora Lens runs that check and films whatever answers.
Read next: Aurora with any phone · Film the aurora on iPhone · Aurora tonight
Tonight's sky over Seattle
Astronomical darkness
8.5 hours
20:47 – 05:16 local time GMT-7
Local clock times for Seattle, between sunset-dark and first light: the sun more than 18° below the horizon, when faint aurora shows best.
Clouds tonight
Partly cloudy43%
Mean cloud cover across tonight's dark hours. Clouds beat cameras — a clear gap is worth chasing.
Moon
98% lit
A bright moon washes out faint aurora. Strong displays cut through it without trouble.
How Seattle plays an aurora alert
When the Kp forecast spikes, Seattle sorts itself by ambition: West Seattleites walk down to Alki and Constellation Park, north-enders drive to the Edmonds waterfront, and the committed keep going up I-5 toward the Skagit flats and Deception Pass. The city's glow sits to your south at all three, which matters more than raw darkness. The visitor mistake is expecting the curtains from the photos; from this latitude it's usually a pale band low on the northern horizon until a camera pulls the color out. The other opponent is marine cloud, which has killed more Seattle auroras than light pollution ever will. It takes a genuinely severe storm to work here, and 2024 gave us two, so when one lands, go.
Best spots to see the northern lights in Seattle
Places locals and guides actually name, with what each one gives you.
Alki Point / Constellation Park
8 km south-west · bus
West Seattle's storm-night gathering spot: the stretch of Beach Drive near 63rd and Alki has a clear shot north across the Sound and is about as dark as you can get without leaving the city. On the October 2024 night a local photographer put out an open invite on West Seattle Blog to meet there at 8:45 and people actually showed. To your eyes it's usually a gray-white smudge; point your phone at it and the color appears, so don't leave just because it looks faint.
Brackett's Landing North, Edmonds
23 km north · car
The classic move is north, and Edmonds is the first place it pays off: the beach beside the ferry dock faces north up the Sound, and every good storm since 2023 has produced a round of waterfront photos in the local news, ferry in the foreground. About 25 minutes up I-5 from downtown when traffic cooperates. If the last Kingston boat is still running you'll share the beach with its headlights, which honestly makes the better photo.
Deception Pass State Park (Bowman Bay)
93 km north · car
The real dark-sky trip: about 90 minutes north past the Skagit flats, with open water views and almost no glow on the northern horizon. It gets named on storm-alert nights by Seattle radio, and on the May 2024 night people were shooting at Pass Lake and West Beach while Anacortes lit up pink. You need a Discover Pass, and check where the gates close before you commit; the pullouts along Rosario Road work if the park lots are shut.
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Aurora in Seattle: common questions
- What Kp does Seattle need to see the northern lights?
- Three different numbers, depending what you mean. Seattle sits at 53.1 geomagnetic latitude, so a long exposure picks the aurora up low on the northern horizon from about Kp 3, you can see it yourself from around Kp 5, and it stands overhead near Kp 7. Aurora glows 100–400 km up, which is why it clears the horizon from hundreds of kilometres away.
- Is it dark enough in Seattle tonight?
- Seattle gets about 8.5 hours of full astronomical darkness tonight, and the moon is 98% lit. Both matter: a bright moon or a sky that never fully darkens will hide a faint display.
- When is the best time of year for aurora in Seattle?
- The season runs from late August to mid-April. Activity peaks statistically around the equinoxes, in late September and again in March, and the hours around local midnight are the most productive on any given night.
- Can an iPhone photograph the aurora in Seattle?
- Yes, and it will usually show more than your eyes do. A long exposure gathers colour that human night vision cannot. Filming it moving needs an app built for the job; Aurora Lens does that and saves a 4K timelapse plus a still frame.
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