Aurora tonight in Umeå

Can you see the aurora borealis from Umeå?

Umeå sits south of the routine aurora zone, where the lights arrive only when geomagnetic activity pushes the oval far enough south to reach it.

Umeå needs Kp 3 and sits at magnetic latitude 63.8°N, a short distance inland from the Gulf of Bothnia. In deep winter the sea freezes, and that matters for aurora watching here: the ice becomes a flat, completely unlit surface, so the horizon opens up in a way it never does over open water with shipping and coastal lighting.

Country

Sweden

Magnetic latitude

63.8°N

Geographic latitude

63.83°

Aurora threshold

Kp 3

Light pollution

Bortle 5

Deep-dark nights / yr

217

Sun at solar midnight

49.6° below horizon

Midnight sun

none

When to look: the Umeå aurora season

The dates worth planning around at Umeå are **4 Sep** to **8 Apr**. Inside that run the sun clears 18° below the horizon on 217 nights and the sky is dark enough for a faint arc to register; outside it you are relying on twilight and luck. The counter-season is just as clearly defined: from about **9 Apr** to **3 Sep** (148 nights) the sun never gets 18° below the horizon, so the sky never reaches full darkness, and between roughly 26 Apr and 16 Aug it does not get properly dark at all — no display, however strong, is visible in that stretch.

At Umeå the sun reaches 49.6° below the horizon at its lowest point of the year, which is more than enough for a black sky. The catch is the other end of the calendar: between about 9 Apr and 3 Sep full astronomical darkness never arrives, so the usable season is narrower than a latitude-based rule of thumb would suggest.

Where to go in Umeå

The frozen bay just offshore, and the coastal roads that reach it, give you a flat unlit horizon with no trees or buildings in the way.

Your viewing direction is fixed by Umeå's position relative to the magnetic pole: look north, low on the horizon at first, and find somewhere that side is open and unlit. The "best window" figure above is simply the first hour tonight where cloud cover falls under roughly 40% while the sky is dark enough here to show anything.

What Kp do you need in Umeå?

Kp is a planetary number, and the only way to read it usefully is against this city's own threshold. For Umeå that threshold is Kp 3, set by a magnetic latitude of 63.8°:

At Umeå two conditions have to hold at once — roughly Kp 3 of geomagnetic activity, plus a clear sky. The three-hour Kp figure hides a lot of variation: substorms can deliver a bright ten minutes inside an otherwise quiet interval. If the verdict above reads MAYBE, the geomagnetic side is usually not the problem; cloud is.

How tonight's answer is calculated for Umeå

Tonight's verdict for Umeå weights five inputs: the live Kp forecast measured against this city's own Kp 3 threshold (35%), night-average cloud cover at 63.83°, 20.26° (25%), moon illumination (15%), the astronomical darkness window computed for this latitude (15%), and light pollution at Bortle class 5 (10%). The method, its data sources and its known limitations are documented on our methodology page. No signup, no app, no account — the page computes everything in your browser from NOAA and Open-Meteo directly. Anonymous analytics and Google's advertising script are the only third parties involved, and both are set out on our privacy page.