In Search of the Northern Lights
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A lot of planning went into our winter trip to Alaska. Fairbanks is one of the best places in North America to view the Northern Lights. According to several websites we visited, if your stay in this central Alaskan city was more than three days during the winter months, you were almost sure to experience the Aurora Borealis, and if you stayed at least a week, your chances were better than 90%. In addition, February and March are the two months with the least likelihood of overcast nights. Finally, we planned our trip to correspond with the new moon, so the night skies would be at their darkest.
There are also a number of websites that help in finding the right place and time for viewing the Northern Lights. Others provide the weather outlook and Aurora forecast for the next three days. Several have live webcams, set up to provide a real-time view of the northern skies. We used all these tools to search out the best viewing locations.
A Typical Aurora Forecast - Clear, cold and an excellent chance of an aurora borealis display
So, how did we do? Spoiler alert - not so well.
Day 1: After nine hours of flights and connections, we were pretty tired when we arrived in Fairbanks International around 10 PM. Nevertheless, we visited Creamer’s Field, a former dairy farm on the north side town that boasts an unobstructed view to the north and little light pollution. We managed to stay awake a couple more hours, but with cloudy skies and a forecast of the same for the remainder of the night, we headed to our AirBnB just after midnight.
Day 2: Once again, the forecast for the night was for cloudy skies, but we decided to return to Creamer’s Field in the hopes we’d get lucky. We arrived about 9 PM, with a temperature of -4 degrees F. The locals thought this was rather balmy, but, even sitting in the car, it was quite cold for our old, Las Vegas oriented bodies. We found that we needed to start the car about every 30-45 minutes to stay warm enough and to keep the frost off the windows. We watched the cloudy skies for a few hours, but since the forecast called for continued overcast skies for the rest of the night, we gave up around 1:30 AM. (The next day we discovered that there was a brief period around 3 AM when the skies were only partly cloudy and had we stayed a couple more hours, we would have seen a small display.
Day 3: Hallelujah! With meteorologists forecasting clear skies and predicting a good chance of an Aurora display between 10 PM and 3 AM that night, we were psyched. Earlier in the day, we had reconnoitered a great spot on a frozen lake in the Chena Lakes Recreation Area, about 22 miles outside Fairbanks, just past the town of North Pole. (We did, of course, stop en route and say hi to Santa). The lake, which we were able to drive onto, had a totally open view to the north, and was known for its dark skies. Perfect!
Our GPS was very concerned when we drove off the road and into a lake
We arrived shortly after ten in the evening, and just as promised, the skies were clear and the stars were out. We dressed in all our layers to fend off the cold, and this time, we brought a thermos of hot chocolate along with some snacks to keep us fortified. We were set.
By one o’clock, still no Northern Lights, but we were just getting into the most likely time for the predicted display. Two o’clock - nothing. Three o’clock - a few clouds moving in. By four o’clock, the sky was mostly overcast and no sign of any activity. Time to give it up for the night. It was hard staying awake for the drive home, but we made it and were asleep by five.
Day 4: We were tired but couldn’t sleep past 8 AM. With our biological clocks all screwed up, we were quite tired all day. The forecast was for cloudy skies all night, so we decided to stay in and keep checking the live Northern Light webcams every half hour or so. That lasted until about eleven, when we both fell asleep. Just as well… reviewing the nights’ webcams showed no activity.
The usual forecast while we were there
Day 5: Another overcast night in the forecast. Another night of watching the webcam and no Northern Lights to be seen.
Day 6: On our last night, the skies were expected to be partly cloudy with a moderate chance of Aurora activity. Since we had an early morning flight, we were staying in a downtown hotel with an airport shuttle, so our options were limited. We watched the webcam for part of the evening, then, being eternal optimists, took a two hour walk between 11 PM and 1 AM on the outside chance we’d see a glimpse of the lights. Surely, our persistence would convince Aurora, goddess of the Northern Lights, to cut us a break, and give us at least a minor showing? But it wasn’t to be… nada - 0 for 6, for us.
So, despite all our planning, our luck on this trip wasn’t great. It wasn’t just us either - several other people we talked to that paid for one of the many guided tours, typically $350 per night, per person, had no better luck than we did. One young lady told us that her camera was able to get a faint photo of the Northern Lights that wasn’t visible to the eye - hardly the spectacular, “suitable-for-framing” photo we were hoping for.
We still enjoyed the trip immensely, however. Marcie has and will talk more in her blogs about everything else we saw and did in Fairbanks, but suffice it to say, we’d do it again in a heartbeat… and probably will.
Now it’s back to Las Vegas and reality. Just out of curiosity, I checked the Aurora forecast and webcam for the night after our return. See below…
Oh well… there’s always next time.