We study the latitudinal distribution of geomagnetic activity in 1966–2009 with local geomagnetic activity indices at 26 magnetic observatories. Using the principal component analysis method we find that more than 97% of the variance in annually averaged geomagnetic activity can be described by the two first principal components. The first component describes the evolution of the global geomagnetic activity, and has excellent correlation with, e.g., the Kp/Ap index. The second component describes the leading pattern by which the latitudinal distribution of geomagnetic activity deviates from the global average. We show that the second component is highly correlated with the relative (annual) fraction of high-speed streams (HSS) in solar wind. The latitudinal distribution of the second mode has a high maximum at auroral latitudes, a local minimum at subauroral latitudes and a low maximum at mid-latitudes. We show that this distribution is related to the difference in the average location and intensity between CME and HSS-related substorms. This paper demonstrates a new way to extract useful, quantitative information about the solar wind from local indices of geomagnetic activity over a latitudinally extensive network.