New York · ≈ 53.4° magnetic latitude · needs about Kp 6.4

Northern lights tonight in New York

New York sits at about 53° magnetic latitude, so the aurora reaches it from roughly Kp 6.4 — a few nights a year, on G2–G3 storms. The card below reads NOAA's oval, tonight's dark hours, the cloud and the Moon for Tupper Lake, Adirondacks right now.

Upstate New York sits at 53–55° magnetic latitude, better than its geographic 43–45° suggests, so a Kp 6.5 (G2–G3) storm puts a real arc over the Adirondacks and Kp 7 reaches the Finger Lakes. The Adirondack High Peaks are the darkest sky in the north-east; Tupper Lake's observatory site is its public front door. The Lake Ontario shore from Sodus to Oswego gives the flat water horizon due north with Toronto's glow far enough away to sit under the arc rather than in it. New York City itself needs a G4 and even then sees only red on the northern sky.

Tupper Lake, Adirondacks Use your own location instead →

The oval now, pole to 40°, New York's meridian at the bottom. Dashed: tonight's forecast Kp.

Reading NOAA…

Tupper Lake, Adirondacks

rows: dark · oval · clear · no Moon — the window is the run of green hours

Reading NOAA…

Where to go in New York

Three sites a photographer would drive to, each with its measured ground darkness from the light pollution atlas and its own verdict for tonight. Coordinates are approximate: a viewpoint, a shore, a car park.

Kp now and the three nights ahead

The Kp index, with New York's row marked → · Storm today? →

Camera settings for this aurora

From the oval's brightness right now and the exposure law.

Plan the sequence · stack the night when you are back · the photography guide →

Other places

Sources

Aurora grid, Kp, solar wind and alerts: NOAA SWPC, read live by your browser. Cloud: MET Norway (CC BY 4.0), which receives the site's coordinates rounded to two decimals. Ground darkness: this site's atlas. Magnetic latitude from the 2025 IGRF dipole; the Kp threshold from NOAA's viewing table.