solar-status

Terminal dashboard for solar activity where you live — current NOAA storm scales, Kp index with 24-hour sparkline, 3-day forecast, aurora odds, what it means for the tech around you, and how the storm may make you feel.

Zero dependencies, no API key. Data comes straight from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and Open-Meteo geocoding.

Usage

npx solar-status

On first run it asks for your city and lets you pick the right one (there are at least four Moscows). The choice is saved; change it anytime:

solar-status --city "Moscow"

Or install globally:

npm install -g solar-status

Options

| Flag | Effect | |------|--------| | --city "Name" | Change the saved city (prompts if ambiguous) | | --watch 300 | Refresh every N seconds (minimum 60) | | --json | Machine-readable output | | --no-color | Disable ANSI colors | | --version | Print version | | --help | Show help |

Config lives at ~/.config/solar-status/config.json; last successful NOAA responses are cached at ~/.cache/solar-status.json so the tool degrades gracefully offline.

Telegram bot

The same dashboard as a Telegram bot — try it live at @solar_status_tgbot, or run your own, still zero dependencies:

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN="123:abc" solar-status-bot

Create a bot with @BotFather to get a token. The bot asks for a shared location or a typed city name, replies with rich HTML messages (expandable health notes, inline refresh button), and answers in Russian when the sender's Telegram language is Russian, English otherwise.

/alerts lets a user opt into storm notifications — any storm (G1+) or strong only (G3+), off by default. The bot checks NOAA every 3 hours and messages subscribers when activity reaches their level (current or 3-day forecast), once per storm rather than daily; a user who blocks the bot is opted out automatically. Chat state lives in ~/.config/solar-status/bot-chats.json. Preview the message formatting without a token: solar-status-bot --demo "Oslo".

What the letters mean

NOAA scales, each 0 (quiet) to 5 (extreme):

• G — geomagnetic storms: power grids, GPS precision, aurora
• R — radio blackouts: HF/shortwave radio (not cellular or Wi-Fi)
• S — solar radiation storms: satellites, astronauts, polar flights

About the health section

The "how it may feel" section reports what people commonly self-report during storms (sleep disturbance, headaches, fatigue). The scientific evidence for these effects is mixed and inconclusive — the tool says so rather than pretending otherwise. One thing is certain: ground-level radiation does not increase during geomagnetic storms. This is not medical advice.

Requirements

Node.js 18+.

License

MIT