Best time to see the northern lights in Arkansas, United States
Updated • 05:58 UTC
Arkansas gets under one clear aurora night a year — 0 in a typical year at Fayetteville, its strongest of 2 tracked locations. Only an extreme storm brings the aurora within reach: nights were counted at Kp 9 or higher, which the planetary index last reached on 29 October 2003. October carries the most of that thin history, at 0.02 in a typical year, which is not a month worth booking.
Typical-year figures: a 1996–2026 planetary Kp record crossed with a 2001–2020 cloud normal. They describe a normal year, not tonight — the live Fayetteville forecast shows the actual cloud, moon and darkness right now. Check tonight's forecast for Fayetteville →
🌌 Clear nights a year
0
Challenging — under one clear aurora night a year: 0 in a typical year Compare with United States
🌟 Best Month
October
0.02 clear nights in a typical year — a storm night, not a season
🌙 Peak Hours
23:00-01:00
Magnetic midnight
⚡ Required Kp
Kp 9.0+
Served for the live forecast; nights counted at Kp 9, last reached 29 October 2003
📍 Strongest location
Aurora on 0 clear nights a year, against 0 at the weakest of 2 tracked locations
Month by month in Arkansas
Astronomical darkness, the nights on which planetary Kp reached Kp 9 inside that darkness, the local cloud normal, and what the cloud leaves of the count.
| Month | Astronomical darkness | Opportunity nights | Mean cloud | Clear opportunity nights | Moon-free |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 10.96h | 0 | 55.4% | 55.3% | |
| February | 10.21h | 0 | 61.7% | 55.9% | |
| March | 9.13h | 0 | 59.5% | 54.5% | |
| April | 7.81h | 0 | 56.1% | 53.4% | |
| May | 6.5h | 0 | 58% | 53.9% | |
| June | 5.81h | 0 | 48.5% | 54.7% | |
| July | 6.19h | 0 | 45.6% | 54.7% | |
| August | 7.4h | 0 | 45.9% | 53.7% | |
| September | 8.74h | 0 | 41.1% | 56.5% | |
| October | 9.91h | 0.03 | 46% | 56.9% | |
| November | 10.79h | 0 | 49.7% | 56.1% | |
| December | 11.2h | 0 | 57.6% | 55.5% |
Opportunity nights are the whole 1996–2026 record. In the current solar cycle alone (since 2023), October has averaged 0 rather than 0.03.
- October: 9.91h of astronomical darkness a night
- October: 0.03 nights reach the Kp threshold inside that darkness
- October: 46% mean cloud leaves 0.02 of them clear
- October: 56.9% of those nights are moon-free
Similar timing: Bologna , Pula , Porto
Higher-odds destinations: Fairbanks , Yellowknife , Tromsø
Every tracked location in Arkansas
All 2 of them, strongest first. The month column is each location's own best month with its clear nights; the Kp is the threshold its live forecast serves.
| Location | Clear nights a year | Best month | Kp needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fayetteville | 0 | October (0.02) | Kp 9 |
| Little Rock | 0 | October (0.02) | Kp 9 |
How these numbers were made
- Evaluated at
- Fayetteville, 36.0726° N 94.1574° W — darkness and cloud are properties of that point, not of a region.
- Darkness
- Sun at or below 18° under the horizon (astronomical twilight), sampled every 10 minutes across every year of the Kp record and averaged per night of each month rather than on one representative day.
- Geomagnetic record
- GFZ Potsdam planetary Kp index, 3-hourly, 1996–2026 — 89,662 intervals, licensed CC BY 4.0.
- Cloud
- NASA POWER 20-year monthly climatology (2001–2020), parameter CLOUD_AMT. A monthly mean, not a forecast.
- Moon
- A night counts as moon-free below 35% lunar illumination while the moon is up.
- Auroral oval
- NOAA auroral-oval model, equatorward boundary near magnetic latitude 67 − 2 × Kp. A model estimate shown beside the measured record; it never replaces it.
- Clear opportunity nights
- Nights on which at least one 3-hour Kp interval falls inside local astronomical darkness and reaches the count threshold, scaled by one minus the monthly mean cloud amount.
- Kp threshold
- Nights were counted per location, from Kp 9 at the northern end to Kp 9 at the southern end of the region; Fayetteville counts at Kp 9. The Required Kp shown above, Kp 9, is the threshold the live Fayetteville forecast serves.
- Dataset version
- Version 2026-09-07, computed offline from the closed record — the page is regenerated, not forecast.
Kp record: GFZ Potsdam (CC BY 4.0). Cloud normal: NASA POWER. How the live forecast is built: methodology page.
Frequently Asked Questions
When can you see the northern lights in Arkansas?
There is no season for it. Arkansas averages 0 clear aurora nights a year across the 1996–2026 Kp record, so the answer is whenever an extreme storm happens to fall on a dark, clear night. October holds the most of that history, at 0.02 clear nights in a typical year. Watch the live forecast rather than the calendar.
What Kp is needed to see the aurora from Arkansas?
Arkansas needs Kp 9, the top of the scale, for any display low on the northern horizon. The NOAA auroral-oval model puts the edge of the oval about 10.7° above the northern horizon at Arkansas at Kp 9. That is a model estimate, separate from the measured Kp record.
Has the aurora ever been visible from Arkansas?
Yes. In the 1996–2026 planetary Kp record the index reached Kp 9, the threshold these nights were counted at for Arkansas, most recently on 29 October 2003. Whether anyone saw it also depended on the cloud, moonlight and darkness of that night, which the Kp record does not carry.
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