Terms of use at a glance
These terms of use govern the public Northern Lights Tonight website. By using the site you agree to this page. The forecast is a tool, not a guarantee, and not a substitute for your own judgment about weather, roads, and safety.
The forecast is not a guarantee
GO, MAYBE, and NO are tool judgments about whether tonight is worth a look. They are not a promise you will see the aurora, and they are not advice to go outside, drive, or travel. UNKNOWN means we are not guessing. A viral photo from another county does not override the local card.
Hours, windows, and obstacle text can change as snapshots refresh. Terms of use include that you will not treat a stale screenshot as a live reading.
NOAA
Northern Lights Tonight is not affiliated with NOAA. Aurora data comes from public NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center products. Cloud-cover data is adapted from Open-Meteo under CC BY 4.0. We do not speak for those agencies, and they do not endorse this site.
Your use
Night travel, driving, and time outdoors are at your own risk. Check local conditions and use your own judgment. Do not trespass, block roads, or treat an unnamed pullout as a recommendation. We do not list unverified parking lots.
You may not scrape the site in a way that degrades the service, misrepresent GO / MAYBE / NO as NOAA products, or copy the methodology as if it were a percentage chance. Terms of use allow ordinary reading, linking, and personal use of the public pages.
What the cards are
GO, MAYBE, NO, and UNKNOWN are labels from a gate order described on the methodology page. They apply to a headline point, not to every driveway in a state. Hours can change when snapshots refresh. A screenshot is not a live reading.
Live pins under /view are readings, not extra indexed guides. Do not present a pin as an official NOAA product. Do not present this site as NOAA.
Linking and reuse
Ordinary links to public pages are welcome. Do not scrape in a way that knocks the site over. Do not wrap the HTML in a product that pretends to be NOAA. Cloud data remains under CC BY 4.0 from Open-Meteo; keep that attribution if you republish cloud text we adapted.
Quotes of a tonight status should include the place name and the time you fetched it. Statuses go stale. Misquoting a GO after the oval has moved is your problem, not a warranty claim.
Accounts and money
v1 has no paid account and no SLA. There is no subscription to refund. If that changes, this page will say so. Until then, using the public pages is enough to accept these rules.
Availability and changes
Snapshots can be missing. The site can be down. We may change copy, coverage, or the terms of use on this URL. Continued use after a change is acceptance of the updated terms. There is no paid account in v1, so there is no paid SLA.
Safety and outdoors
Cold, ice, wildlife, rural roads, and other people are outside the forecast. A GO is not permission to trespass or to stop in a traffic lane. A NO is not a ban on walking your dog. Take lights, tell someone where you are going, and leave if the road is bad.
We do not staff a hotline. hello@aurora-tonight.com is for site questions, not rescue. If you need emergency help, use local emergency services, not this inbox.
Data freshness
Snapshots refresh on a schedule described in operations docs, not on a promise in this page. UNKNOWN is the honest state when sources are missing or too old. Reloading will not create oval data NOAA did not publish.
Cloud fields can lag. Oval grids can lag. Your clock and the place timezone on the card can disagree with a screenshot from this morning. Fetch again before you drive.
Intellectual property
Site copy, layout, and the GO / MAYBE / NO framing are the product’s. NOAA products remain NOAA’s. Open-Meteo cloud adaptation remains under CC BY 4.0. Do not remove required credit if you quote cloud text.
Wordmark and logo are for identifying this site. Do not use them to imply NOAA affiliation or a partnership we do not have.
Governing notes
The site is operated for a US English audience. If a dispute about these pages ever needs a venue, it will be argued from that operating fact. We would rather answer email than argue.
Nothing on a forecast page is professional advice: not legal, not medical, not meteorological beyond the published gates, not travel insurance. Read the local weather service for hazards other than aurora.
Photos you take are yours. Do not send us images of strangers’ faces and expect us to host them. v1 has no upload form. If you email a photo, we may delete it after reading the question.
Automated access: keep request volume reasonable. Do not hammer/api/ routes. Health checks belong on/api/health at a human interval, not a tight loop. We may rate-limit or block obvious abuse.
Third-party sites linked from the footer (Open-Meteo, Creative Commons, NOAA) have their own terms. Clicking them leaves this product. We are not their support desk.
If you reprint a GO / MAYBE / NO, keep the place name, the headline point, and the fetch time. Omitting those turns a local tool judgment into a fake nationwide claim, which these rules do not allow.
Use of published terms remains the same for the homepage, the guides, and the local pages. Use of published terms remains the same if snapshots are UNKNOWN. Use of published terms remains the same if you arrived from a ZIP search. No extra contract pops up later.
Night driving, ice, and trespass stay your risk even when a card says GO. A MAYBE is not a dare. A NO is not a ban on standing in your own yard. Read the named obstacle before you spend fuel.
If this URL and a social thread disagree, this URL wins for the product. The thread is not a data source and not an amendment to these rules.
Limitation
To the extent the law allows, Northern Lights Tonight is provided as-is. We are not liable for a missed show, a wasted drive, or a decision you made from a GO / MAYBE / NO. Terms of use do not create a warranty that NOAA data is complete or that our snapshot is the newest file on earth.
If a court finds one clause unenforceable, the rest of the terms of use still apply. These terms are for the public website only. They are not a NOAA document.
Contact
Questions about these terms of use: hello@aurora-tonight.com.