Northern Canada Girl Disappears for Months Thenand Turns Back Up Again
My quest to run into the Northern Lights began in September 2011 and we've been chasing them every winter season since. I had literally just left from visiting Tim while he was living in Republic of iceland and the very next night the Northern Lights danced for a week straight. They were so vivid then agile, they even kept him up at night. Subsequently Tim raving about how incredible they were, I just had to see for myself.
I got my start run a risk simply 3 months later when I spent five nights in Rovaniemi, Finland on the Arctic Circle. And for five cloudy nights, I eventually went to bed afterwards watching the heaven until the wee hours of the forenoon.
And then Tim and I traveled to Svalbard in March of 2012. At 78° Northward and simply 600 miles from the North Pole, we were really above the Aurora Belt. We spent four nights watching for the elusive Aurora. Finally, on our 2d night in Tromso (on the eve of my birthday) the Northern Lights finally fabricated an appearance. But it was cloudy, they were a white-grey colour, and they danced for less than an hour. I had seen them, but it wasn't what I expected and I craved a more than spectacular display.
Wanting to band in the New Year in Reykjavik considering of the fireworks brandish of epic proportions we had heard near, the trip gave usa another excuse to go Aurora hunting.
In the weeks leading up to our Iceland adventure and always since, nosotros've received tons of letters, comments, and emails from readers and followers about trips to see the Northern Lights. Nosotros don't want to be a Negative Nancy, just feel it's our duty to tell yous all these v x things no ane always tells yous about the Northern Lights so you can set realistic expectations for an Aurora hunting trip.
1. Don't go for the Northern Lights; go for the destination.
In talking to locals, including our new friend The Aurora Hunter, no 1 in Republic of iceland had seen the Northern Lights in 3 weeks prior to our sighting. Storms had moved in clouding up the nighttime skies and there just wasn't much activity going on on the sun.
Had we visited Iceland, Republic of finland, Kingdom of norway or Svalbard only hoping to see the Northern Lights, we'd probably have been really disappointed. Instead, each destination gave united states of america fantastic opportunities to be mushers for the day, go glacier hiking, and await for polar bears on a snowmobile expedition. Your adventure will exist a memorable one when you take activities planned that you're really excited for and seeing the Northern Lights is an added bonus if they practise come out to dance.
Merely, if you really desire the best chances of seeing the Northern Lights in Europe, head to Abisko. It's the driest identify in Sweden and has the most clear nights of nigh anywhere else in the Aurora belt.
Of course, Europe isn't the only place yous can see the Northern Lights. They're also a number of places where yous can run across the Northern Lights in Canada and Alaska if you want to chase the Aurora in Northward America.
2. The Northern Lights are unpredictable.
In lodge to run across the Northern Lights, yous need a dark, clear night. They are visible from late Baronial to early April anytime during dark hours, which in places like Abisko or Tromsø tin can be nearly 24 hours a day in winter. There likewise needs to be solar flares on the sun or solar wind; the Aurora Borealis happens when particles from the sun enter Earth's atmosphere and collide violently with gas atoms. At that place are Aurora forecasts and we even use the Aurora Forecast app for iPhone that volition predict the aurora activity level.
But the fact is, the Northern Lights are unpredictable. We've had clear nights when the Aurora forecast showed level 4 (loftier) activity and we didn't see anything. The Aurora forecast said level 0 (no activity) on the night we saw them in Myvatn, Republic of iceland.
Check the Aurora forecast.
three. It doesn't have to exist cold to meet the Northern Lights; it just has to exist nighttime.
Some other common misconception people have is that information technology has to exist cold to see the Northern Lights.
The Northern Lights are actually active all year round. But because they are only typically visible in the aurora zone between 65° and 72° North, they are not visible from Apr through August when the aurora zone experiences almost 24 hours of daylight. People just tend to associate Northern Lights with the cold since they are visible in the winter months, but we have seen them in August in very comfortable temperatures.
Since it does need to be dark in club to see the Northern Lights in the heaven, late August/September through the very start of April is the best time to go to a destination located in the aurora zone for a chance to see them.
Keep in mind that December isn't typically the best calendar month because popular Northern Lights destinations like Tromsø, Kingdom of norway and Kiruna, Sweden take about seventy% probability of precipitation each day during the month of December. Precipitation means cloud cover and cloud encompass makes spotting the Northern Lights extremely hard or frequently incommunicable.
You can consult with weather websites like WeatherSpark or The Weather Channel to find the averages for both temperature and precipitation when planning your trip.
4. The conditions in the Arctic tin can modify in the blink of an centre.
The weather in the Arctic is as notoriously unpredictable as the Northern Lights themselves. It's not unusual to have sunshine, clouds, pelting, sleet, hail, snow and high winds all in the same day. Just because you wake upwardly to crystal clear skies, that doesn't mean those crystal clear skies will stick around until Northern Lights viewing fourth dimension once it's night out.
And the reverse is true. It was snowing heavily and there was 100% cloud encompass when we went to bed on one of the nights we've seen the Northern Lights. Which leads us to our side by side tip…
five. Yous have to put effort into seeing the Northern Lights.
As nosotros said before, it has to be dark to see the Northern Lights. That may mean you need to get out of the city to avoid light pollution. The Northern Lights are visible in cities like Reykjavik and Tromsø when they are at the strongest, but your best bet is to seek out spots in the Arctic countryside.
Northern Lights tours are cracking because the tour operators have been chasing the Northern Lights for years and can discover the best spots for potential viewing fifty-fifty when there is low hanging cloud comprehend. Nearly bout operators volition even offering for you to join a tour the next evening if you don't meet the Northern Lights. Viator hosted us on a Northern Lights Cruise with Special Tours and even though our cruise turned into a jitney tour considering of loftier winds and nosotros didn't meet the Northern Lights, Special Tours graciously invited every single person on the tour to join them again whatever night within the next twelvemonth.
Nosotros spent 9 nights in Republic of iceland and after New Year'due south Eve, all of the remainder of those nights spent staying on Icelandic farms where nosotros could literally walk out our front door to check for Aurora sightings. And that's exactly what we did; we fix our warning clocks for every hour between 11pm and 2am. As much as it sucks dragging yourself out of your toasty warm bed subsequently you've only drifted off to sleep and shocking yourself awake with blasts of common cold Chill air, our diligence paid off i evening.
Merely afterwards 1am and afterwards we had gone to bed with heavy snowfall falling and 100% cloud cover, the wind blew the clouds abroad and a very faint green glow appeared on the horizon. Nosotros quickly threw on warm clothes and headed outside just in time for the Aurora to get active. It was just visible to our naked eye for about an hr, but we watched the light-green wisp billow and trip the light fantastic in the sky in the howling wind until the very last 2nd that information technology danced away.
Tip: Some hotels (such as Hotel Berg where we stayed in Keflavik and Hotel Ranga on Republic of iceland's South Coast) offer an Aurora wake-upwards call. Be sure to ask at reception equally they frequently have Aurora hunters that will telephone call the night staff to alert them to sightings.
6. Await in the direction north when hunting Northern Lights.
It might sound obvious, but Tim and I had this very argument on our terminal Northern Lights trip. Every bit we waited for the kickoff signs of the Northern Lights, I told him to look north.
"Nosotros're already in the north, and so they can offset anywhere," Tim retorted back.
Not believing me (typical!), I enlisted the help of a Northern Lights guide to confirm that the Northern Lights near always offset from the direction n.
When heading out to hunt for Northern Lights on your own, ensure yous know which management is north. The Aurora is unpredictable and can be very brusque lived. And when it is dim, it can wait like a wispy grey or white cloud so it can likewise exist easy to miss.
Your chances are better if you know which direction to lookout. If you don't have a great sense of direction, just ask a local. The Northern Lights are often as normal equally the sun rising to a local and they can tell you which direction they most often appear.
seven. The Aurora Borealis appears in a spectrum of colors. Including white-gray.
The unique colors of the Northern Lights are created by the Earth's spectra of gases and the acme in the atmosphere where the standoff of particles from the dominicus and the Earth's gases takes place. Our naked eye can near easily see the green-yellow part of the spectrum where the sun emits most of its light. Dark-green is the virtually common color observed but the Northern Lights can also announced white-gray. And a cloudy dark if you've never seen them before, you lot might not fifty-fifty be entirely sure of what you lot're looking at.
Sometimes the Northern Lights are even present simply not visible to the naked eye. We took a photo of some Icelandic horses nearby our cabin afterwards we thought the Northern Lights had disappeared. Nosotros couldn't see them, but our camera still could.
viii. You tin see the Northern Lights when there is a full moon.
Yet another misconception people have about how to encounter the Northern Lights is that y'all tin't meet the Aurora when there is a full moon. We've shot the Northern Lights on multiple occasions with a total moon and actually like the issue. The moon illuminates the foreground and produces a much more bluish-black sky.
With the total moon, we were fifty-fifty able to capture a Northern Lights selfie when out hunting solo. Without the moon, nosotros would have needed someone else to paint us with a light, which is technique y'all can use to burnish an object in the foreground of a long exposure photograph, making a selfie impossible.
9. The closest the Northern Lights always come to Earth is fourscore kilometers above the surface.
The Northern Lights often appear to shoot out of mountains like lava out of a volcano, yet information technology's all only an optical illusion. The closest that the Northern Lights ever come to Globe is 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the Earth's surface. In comparison, airplanes fly about x kilometers higher up the surface.
The altitude at which the Northern Lights appear has an outcome on the colour that they display. Different atom collisions in the magnetosphere are what produce the various color spectrum that the Northern Lights appear in. These collisions occur at different altitudes.
Dark-green is the most common colour that the Northern Lights appear in and light-green occurs from 100 – 240 kilometers above the World's surface. Blues and violets occur below 100 kilometers and reds occur to a higher place 240 kilometers.
10. The Northern Lights aren't going to disappear.
Our favorite click-allurement article title of the concluding year has been "Concluding Take a chance to Meet the Northern Lights Before They Disappear," implying that you've got to go right at present or at that place's absolutely no take chances of seeing the Northern Lights. The Northern Lights are Not going to disappear.
Scientists do believe, however, that the Northern Lights brighten and become more visible in line with the sun's activity. The dominicus has what scientists refer to as a solar life cycle and information technology occurs over the duration of about 11 years. The sun is currently approaching its solar minimum, the period of the least solar activity. With less sun spots and solar flares, the ionization and excitation of the particles needed to produce the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis happens far less frequently.
That does hateful that now and in the next few years is the best time to go on a Northern Lights chasing trip because the chances of seeing them volition decrease. But they are not disappearing altogether.
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