aurora-forecast-kp-index-mcp

Aurora forecast and Kp index for AI assistants. Ask whether you can see the northern lights tonight from your town and get an hour-by-hour answer built from NOAA's predicted Kp index, the auroral oval, darkness and cloud cover, plus the live NOAA OVATION aurora probability and space weather alerts.

This is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. It reads NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) products and Open-Meteo cloud cover at call time and needs no API key.

Tools

Tool	What it returns
aurora_tonight	Hour by hour through the dark hours, for up to 3 nights: NOAA's predicted Kp, whether the auroral oval reaches overhead or the horizon at the place, cloud cover, and a good, possible or unlikely verdict with the first worthwhile hour.
aurora_now	The NOAA OVATION nowcast probability overhead and on the poleward horizon, the current Kp, darkness and cloud cover, with a go-look verdict.
kp_forecast	The planetary Kp index forecast in 3-hour UTC blocks with the NOAA G-scale storm level, the last 24 hours observed and the daily maximum.
space_weather_alerts	Recent NOAA SWPC alerts, watches and warnings, newest first, optionally geomagnetic only.
aurora_compare_locations	Ranks 2 to 10 places by tonight's good and possible dark hours, so you can choose where to drive.

Every result has structured JSON, a plain-text summary, as_of, source and more (a page on mcpstamp.com). Every tool is marked read-only.

What it knows that your model does not

• Tonight's Kp. NOAA updates the forecast several times a day, and the JSON forecast leaves out the rest of the current UTC day, so the server fills those blocks from the SWPC 3-day forecast text.
• How far south the aurora reaches for a given Kp, from the NOAA oval table on a dipole geomagnetic latitude, and the Kp a place needs to see aurora on the horizon or overhead.
• Whether it is actually dark (sun 12 degrees below the horizon) and whether clouds will hide the sky.

Install

Hosted (Claude.ai custom connector, ChatGPT developer mode)

Paste this URL. No token, no sign-up.

https://aurora-forecast-kp-index-mcp.lipmichal.workers.dev/mcp

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http aurora-forecast https://aurora-forecast-kp-index-mcp.lipmichal.workers.dev/mcp

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop adds remote servers under Settings, Connectors, Add custom connector. Paste the URL above.

Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "aurora-forecast": { "url": "https://aurora-forecast-kp-index-mcp.lipmichal.workers.dev/mcp" }
  }
}

VS Code

Add to .vscode/mcp.json.

{
  "servers": {
    "aurora-forecast": { "type": "http", "url": "https://aurora-forecast-kp-index-mcp.lipmichal.workers.dev/mcp" }
  }
}

Local stdio

The npm package is not published. Build it from this repository with Node 20 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/theluckystrike/aurora-forecast-kp-index-mcp && cd aurora-forecast-kp-index-mcp
npm install && npm run build
claude mcp add aurora-forecast -- node $(pwd)/dist/stdio.js

Example prompts

• "Can I see the northern lights tonight in Fairbanks?"
• "What is the Kp index forecast for the next three days?"
• "Is the aurora visible right now in Tromso?"
• "Is there a geomagnetic storm watch?"
• "Which is better tonight for aurora, Duluth or Marquette?"

Data sources

Full list in DATA_SOURCES.md.

• NOAA SWPC planetary K-index forecast and the 3-day forecast text.
• NOAA SWPC OVATION aurora nowcast.
• NOAA SWPC alerts.
• Open-Meteo hourly cloud cover and geocoding.

Limitations

• The Kp-to-oval rule is NOAA's rule of thumb, not a guarantee. Aurora can appear further south during strong substorms and fail to appear at a forecast Kp.
• OVATION is a 30 to 90 minute nowcast on a 1-degree grid.
• Cloud cover is a model forecast for the nearest grid point.
• The hosted server caches SWPC products for 5 to 15 minutes.

More

More MCP servers that answer questions your assistant cannot answer alone are on mcpstamp.com.

Part of the Zovo MCP collection at https://mcp.zovo.one

Built by theluckystrike.

Development

npm install
npm test                              # builds, then runs the fixture tests and an offline stdio test
node scripts/stdio-transcript.mjs     # live stdio round trip, writes .live/stdio-transcript.jsonl

CI (.github/workflows/bundle.yml) runs the tests, the type check and wrangler deploy --dry-run --outdir out, and uploads the Worker bundle as an artifact.

License

MIT