Space Weather Alerts: Aurora & Radio Blackout

Current space weather conditions in one row, for ham and HF radio operators, aurora tour operators and photographers, and teams whose work depends on GPS or satellite communication. Get the geomagnetic storm level, how far south the aurora is visible, the solar flare and radio blackout level, and NOAA's active space weather alerts.

What you get

One snapshot per run:

• Geomagnetic Kp index, plus the latitude the aurora may be visible from, so you get "aurora may be visible above about 54°N" instead of a bare number
• Solar flare class and NOAA radio blackout level (R1 to R5, NOAA's own scale), from live GOES X-ray readings
• Active NOAA space weather alerts, watches and warnings, most recent first

Who this is for

• Ham and HF radio operators checking propagation and blackouts.
• Aurora tour operators and photographers planning by visibility latitude.
• Drone, survey and satellite communication teams watching for storms that affect GPS and radio.

Input

{ "maxAlerts": 10 }

Field	Type	Description
maxAlerts	integer (default 10)	How many of the most recent NOAA alert/watch/warning messages to include.

Output

One record per run:

{
  "geomagnetic": {
    "kpIndex": 4,
    "observedAt": "2026-08-08T00:00:00",
    "auroraVisibleLatitude": 58.3
  },
  "radioBlackout": {
    "xrayFlux": 0.0000253,
    "flareClass": "M2.5",
    "observedAt": "2026-08-08T01:02:00Z",
    "rScale": "R1",
    "rScaleDescription": "Minor radio blackout"
  },
  "activeAlerts": [
    {
      "productId": "K04W",
      "issuedAt": "2026-08-04 08:10:52.687",
      "message": "Space Weather Message Code: WARK04\r\n..."
    }
  ],
  "fetchedAt": "2026-08-08T01:40:00.000Z"
}

How it works

Three direct calls to NOAA's own public JSON feeds — no scraping, no proxy, no key:

• Kp index: services.swpc.noaa.gov/products/noaa-planetary-k-index.json
• X-ray flux: services.swpc.noaa.gov/json/goes/primary/xrays-6-hour.json (the 0.1-0.8nm long channel, GOES's standard flare-classification band)
• Alerts: services.swpc.noaa.gov/products/alerts.json

R-scale thresholds and flare-class letters follow NOAA's own published definitions (see swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation). Aurora-visible latitude is a widely published approximate viewline table by Kp index — a planning signal, not a guarantee; local weather, light pollution, and time of night all matter too.

Pricing note

Billed per snapshot (one run = one charge), regardless of how many alerts are active. Cheap enough to schedule hourly for continuous monitoring without the cost multiplying with alert volume.

Related products

• US Weather Forecast & Alerts API (NWS): ground-level NWS forecasts and alerts for a location
• Field Ops Risk Briefing: combines weather with GPS/radio conditions for field crews
• Earthquake Tracker: a different hazard type (seismic activity) for the same kind of monitoring use case