Northern Lights Forecast for Boston

Only in the strongest storms. Long exposures of the lights have been published over Dorchester Bay and from Millennium Park, and the aurora has shown pink over the skyline from Squantum in Quincy, with photos from Brookline and Belmont. It takes a severe or extreme storm; anything weaker needs a drive out of the city.

North, to the coast. Halibut Point State Park in Rockport, about 40 miles northeast, looks over Ipswich Bay toward New Hampshire and Maine and is a place people have photographed the aurora from. Plum Island Point in Newburyport, about 35 miles north, and Salisbury Beach, about 40 miles north at the mouth of the Merrimack, are beaches facing the open Atlantic. All three are roughly an hour's drive from the city.

Only partly. The Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, which covers the southern three-quarters of the island, is open from sunrise to sunset, so its beaches and parking lots are closed when the aurora is out. The northern end of the island belongs to Newburyport and is outside the refuge; Plum Island Point, with its beach and the 1898 lighthouse, is the part people use after dark.

It is one of the usual ones near Boston. The park is at the tip of Cape Ann in Rockport, about 40 miles northeast of the city, and its seaward view runs across Ipswich Bay to the Isles of Shoals off New Hampshire and Mount Agamenticus in Maine, which means an open horizon exactly where the aurora appears. People have photographed the lights from here.

In Boston, you usually need at least Kp 8 to have a reasonable chance of seeing the northern lights. Lower Kp can still bring a faint aurora display low on the northern horizon, but it is less common.

This is based on magnetic latitude, and Kp index is a global geomagnetic index, so treat it as a rule of thumb, not a location-specific guarantee.

Tonight, the NOAA Kp index forecast is 1.7 to 2.7. That is below the usual Kp index threshold for Boston, so seeing the aurora is unlikely.