Who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to look up in the night sky and see ribbons of green, red and violet dancing over their head? I’m talking about the Aurora Borealis, better known as the Northern Lights. If you’ve ever dreamed of traveling to see the aurora, there is no better time than today. Well, not TODAY. The Northern Lights aren’t generally visible during the summer. But they promise to be more active and vivid over the next 12-18 months than they have been for the past 22 years, making the next year or so the best chance you’ll have to see the Northern Lights perhaps in your lifetime.
Success at seeing the Northern Lights and in their most vivid form comes from being in the right place, at the right time, and under the right viewing conditions. Selecting a destination that satisfies all these criteria, and is accessible to tourists, can be challenging. I’ll offer some tips in this post, and if you want help planning your trip…give me a call. Janet and I are planning a Northern Lights trip for March 15-24 2025 and we'd love to have you join us.
Why Now?
The Northern Lights occur when solar energy interacts with our atmosphere. They can occur at any time, but are most active in the months just before, and just after, what is known as the Solar Maximum or solar max. The solar max refers to the peak in the 11-year sunspot cycle, when the sun is most likely to experience the major flares and ejection events that result in the most vivid Northern Lights shows. The last solar max was relatively weak, but the current solar max is proving to be far stronger and more active than expected. The exact time of the solar max is tough to pinpoint, but it will occur sometime between late 2024 and early 2026. With the current solar max cycle having proven itself to be far more active than originally forecast, the next 12-18 months present the best time perhaps in a lifetime to plan your Northern Lights trip.
The Best Place
We’ve had a number of clients express interest in a trip to see the Northern Lights, most often asking about Iceland. Way to go Iceland Bureau of Tourism! There are some amazing pictures of the Northern Lights taken from Iceland while tourists bask in the warm waters of volcanic hot springs like the Blue Lagoon. Iceland’s tourism industry leans heavily on those shots in their marketing campaigns, but my take on those pictures is that they don’t represent what most tourists visiting Iceland will see. They come from professional photographers who live in Iceland and can make the trek far away from the city lights to capture the Northern lights when they put on their most active, and colorful, shows. Which is not to say Iceland is a bad place to go to see the Northern Lights. It just isn’t the best place.
The first thing I tell anyone asking about a Northern Lights trip is to get north of the Arctic Circle, as far north as you can afford to travel. The further north you go, the better your chances of witnessing the Northern Lights at their best. Most of Iceland lies south of the Arctic Circle, which means it isn’t even the second-best place to see the Northern Lights. Its popularity as a Northern Lights destination is equal parts marketing, and the fact that Iceland Air offers cheap flights from several U.S. East Coast hubs.
There are a number of locations in Northern Europe that offer better conditions for Northern Lights viewing than Iceland, but one town in particular has come to be known as the Northern Lights capital of Europe…Alta, Norway. And for good reason…Alta offers the best combination of all the factors necessary for a successful Northern Lights hunt. It is located well north of the Arctic Circle…about as far north as you can get without a dog sled. Alta has a number of hotels and lodges that cater to tourists, and there are multiple daily direct flights from Oslo. Alta is a small town, and hotels are already booking up, but you can get the same Northern Lights experience from Tromsø which is about 170km away as the snow goose flies. Tromsø is a small coastal city with more hotels than Alta, and it offers the same ideal conditions for viewing the Northern Lights. Best of all, the guides that lead Northern Lights hunts from Alta and Tromsø report an 80% success rate. That’s pretty impressive considering winter in northern Europe brings more cloud cover and storms than other times of the year.
The Right Time
We are now in the window for the best Northern Lights viewing in a generation, but there are certain times of the year that are better than others to plan your Northern Lights hunt. You can’t go anywhere in the northern hemisphere during the summer months and expect to see the aurora. They aren’t visible in daylight, and in the northern latitudes where the lights are most active, summer means almost constant daylight.
There are three times of the year that are ideal for Northern Lights viewing…the days surrounding the spring and fall equinoxes, and the winter months. The equinoxes offer a unique seasonal alignment between the sun and the Earth’s respective magnetic fields. That magnetic field alignment effectively creates an express lane into our atmosphere for the solar energy that causes the Northern Lights, and there are enough hours of darkness to be able to see the displays. The winter months, between December and February, don't offer that highway into our atmosphere. What they do offer is many more hours of darkness, and that's the most important consideration for seeing the Northern Lights.
The Right Viewing Conditions
Once you get yourself to the right place, at the right time, you still have the problem of finding the right viewing conditions. The easy part is getting as far away from city lights as you can. Light pollution is your enemy when it comes to viewing the Northern Lights, and the best Northern Lights tours will take you far from any sources of light pollution.
Finding the right atmospheric viewing conditions is more challenging and involves the one variable you can’t control…the weather. The Northern Lights still occur when the skies are cloudy, but you can’t see them from the ground. The solar energy that causes the Northern Lights interacts with the highest layers of our atmosphere, at altitudes of between 100-400km. Clouds live at much lower altitudes, usually under 18km, blocking your view of the upper atmosphere where the Northern Lights occur.
The other secret to enhancing your chances of a successful Northern Lights hunt is to plan for more than just a few days at the destination. If you limit yourself to a three- or four-day tour in Iceland, even a short stretch of cloudy weather can block your view of this amazing spectacle. Wherever you go on your Northern Lights hunt, plan to spend a week if you can afford the time, two weeks is better.
If you only have three to four days to work with, book a Northern Lights hunt for each day you are at the destination. Tour operators know the local area and they will do everything they can to take you to places that are known to offer clear skies, even during cloudy weather. That’s another reason Alta is such a good choice…the local microclimate keeps the cloud cover away more than just about any other location in Norway. Which is not to say Alta doesn’t get its share of aurora-busting inclement weather…they certainly get plenty of snow. But while it may be snowing in Alta, the tour guides have the best track record of finding a spot nearby where the skies are clear enough for your Northern Lights experience.
Another good option for a Northern Lights trip is to book a cruise. Norway’s unofficial national cruise line, Hurtigruten, offers Northern Lights cruises during the winter months with a “Northern Lights Guarantee.” If you don’t see the Northern Lights during one of these specially designated cruises, Hurtigruten will give you a credit toward a future cruise where you can try again. There are strings attached of course, but it is still a pretty good deal.
Alaska and Canada
You don’t have to go to Norway to see the Northern Lights. You can witness the spectacle closer to home, well…in North America anyway. There are reasonably good Northern Lights viewing conditions both in Northern Alaska…Fairbanks and north, and in northern Canadian destinations like Yellowknife. Both are located at similar latitudes as Iceland, so they don’t represent the best places to see the aurora. Also, a Northern Lights trip to either destination won’t save you any time or money over traveling to Norway or Finland. It takes almost as long to get to Fairbanks or Yellowknife as it does to get to Alta, and costs just as much. If you have your heart set on hunting the Northern Lights in Alaska, we work with a supplier that can make your experience almost as good as Alta.
It's Mother Nature
The Northern Lights are a natural phenomenon. Wherever and whenever you go to see them, you are at the mercy of Mother Nature. There are websites that provide Northern Lights forecasts, but as with any weather forecast their predictions are only good for a couple of days. Unless you live in Iceland or Norway and can head out on a Northern Lights hunt at the drop of a hat, you can’t use those websites to plan a Northern Lights trip.
You can plan a trip to the right place and time, stay for two weeks, and you may still come back with nothing to show for it other than pictures of a cloudy sky. For that reason, I recommend planning a trip with activities that will make your trip unique and satisfying even if you don’t get to see the aurora. That won’t eliminate your disappointment, but it can temper it.
The Northern Lights are one of the most amazing and magical natural phenomena to witness. Take advantage of the current active solar cycle and plan your Northern Lights trip now. Whether you go to Norway, Finland, or especially if you go to Iceland, plan to allow as much time as your schedule and budget permits, and plan to visit a destination with enough activities to keep you occupied during the daylight hours. This is your best chance in a lifetime to see this colorful display in the sky. Don't look back on it and wish you had taken advantage of it.
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