Northern Lights in New HampshireVisible Tonight?
Real-time aurora forecast updated every 15 minutes
Kp 2.0 is well below the Kp 6 that New Hampshire needs, so the aurora stays too far north tonight.
Verify with the live sky camera →No clear chance in the next 10 nights; forecasts update several times a day, so check back.
Tonight, Hour by Hour
The four things that must line up over New Hampshire, and how each hour of the night looks.
Kp 2.0 now, Kp 6 needed here
0% cloud cover around 10 PM
Dark from 10 PM
Dark rural skies; moon 8% lit
All times shown in New Hampshire local time (EDT), not your device time.
10-Night Aurora Outlook
Planning a trip to New Hampshire? Peak activity, cloud cover, and darkness for the nights ahead.
Kp ~ marks nights beyond NOAA's precise 3-day forecast, estimated from the 27-day outlook. Treat the far nights as a rough guide, not a promise.
Seeing the aurora in New Hampshire
The northern lights reach New Hampshire only on the bigger geomagnetic nights, but when they do, the state's dark North Country and White Mountains give you a real shot. From Pittsburg down to Errol and the Kancamagus, the sky is genuinely dark, and at Kp 6 the aurora can climb over the northern horizon and mirror off the Great North Woods lakes.
Our verdict is not a Kp number. The Kp index is a global, three-hour average, and treating it as a promise is the single biggest reason people drive out and see nothing. Instead we check four things for New Hampshire specifically: whether forecast activity reaches the level this latitude needs, whether the sky will be clear, whether it will actually be dark, and how much moonlight and local light pollution will wash out. Only when all four line up do we say yes.
When to go: aurora season in New Hampshire
Aurora season in New Hampshire runs from late August through mid-April. It is not that the sun goes quiet in summer: the sky over the North Country simply never gets dark enough for long enough in June and July. The strongest odds land around the equinoxes, September, October, and March, when Earth's magnetic field couples more efficiently with the solar wind and the same activity produces bigger displays.
Through the current solar maximum the northern part of the state has been getting photographable aurora on a handful of nights in a typical month, and a few storms each year push naked-eye color down toward the White Mountains and beyond. Those big nights are exactly what the 10-night outlook above is for: when a Kp 6 or 7 storm is on the way, it usually shows up there two or three days ahead.
Head north: the North Country dark-sky advantage
The best thing New Hampshire has going for aurora is its far north. The Great North Woods around Pittsburg and Errol hold some of the darkest skies in the eastern United States, and Umbagog Lake State Park is rated Bortle 1, the darkest class on the scale. The aurora lives on the northern horizon at this latitude, so a dark sky with open water or a low tree line to the north is worth the drive.
That gives you a simple rule: when in doubt, head north until the light domes of the valley towns drop behind you. A modest storm that reads camera-only from a lit parking lot can turn into visible green over the lake from a dark shoreline in Pittsburg, with the Milky Way and the aurora sharing the same sky.
How to read tonight's forecast like a local
From the dark North Country you generally need about Kp 6 for a naked-eye show and roughly Kp 5 for your camera to catch it; from the southern part of the state the bar rises to Kp 7 or more. Regulars know the Kp number is only the entry ticket: a clear north horizon and real darkness matter just as much, which is why the verdict above folds cloud cover and twilight into one answer instead of making you juggle three apps.
On a promising night, get out early, give it two full hours, and let your eyes dark-adapt for 15 minutes without looking at your phone. Displays arrive in substorms: bursts of 15 to 40 minutes with quiet gaps between them. Point night mode at the northern horizon now and then; the camera will pick up an approaching display before your eyes do.