Northern lights tonight in Minnesota

Minnesota sits at about 57° magnetic latitude, so the aurora reaches it from roughly Kp 4.6 — a few nights a month in an active year. The card below reads NOAA's oval, tonight's dark hours, the cloud and the Moon for Voyageurs National Park, Rainy Lake right now.

Northern Minnesota is at 56–57° magnetic latitude, a shade better than Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Voyageurs is a certified dark-sky park with the Canadian Shield to the north and no lights for 100 km. A Kp 5 night puts the arc on the horizon from the Twin Cities; from Ely it is up at 20°. The Boundary Waters lakes freeze into open white horizons by December, and the North Shore of Superior gives the same flat water line as Michigan's coast. Cloud is the enemy in November; January is the clearest month and the coldest.