Tromsø: Chasing the Clouds

Everybody traveling to see the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) experiences a lot of psychological pressure. You’ve come a long way to see this light show of the night skies, now where is it? 

The issue is that several things have to line up perfectly to produce an aurora occurrence that can be visible to the naked eye. While the KP Index can alert you to the probability of solar activity on a particular night, there’s no guarantee your area will see anything. And even if there is activity, the weather may not cooperate. 

“Chasing the lights is a misnomer,” said Jacob, one of the guides we worked with. “You’re actually chasing the clouds, trying to find a clear spot to see the lights.”

Sheer luck, it seems, plays a big role.

During our second  night in Tromsø, we went out to dinner with our friend Alex at a waterside restaurant, the Kaia, facing the marina. The manager, a friend of Alex’s named Richard, stood outside studying the sky. “I think there’s a strong possibility of seeing the lights tonight,” he told us. “You can go inside and I’ll let you know if there’s anything going on.”

Sure enough, we had just just placed our orders when Richard scurried over to beckon us outside. And there it was, a grey smudge arcing across black of night with a faint green glow. Viewing it in the camera lens brought out the green more strongly. It came and went; by the time we had finished our reindeer burger and reindeer stew we had gone out several times to take a look.

Viewing the aurora from the Tromsø pier was not ideal because of the light pollution rising up from the city and harbor. On Alex’s suggestion, the three of us next took a taxi across the bay to Fjellheisen, a cable car that takes you 420 metres (1,380 ft) up a mountain overlooking Tromsø. There, on the frigid observation deck, we could see the Northern Lights dancing with our naked eyes.  

We were elated, having seen the Lights with three more nights still to go in Tromsø. As I remarked to Bina, anything after this was “just icing on the cake.”

I should have put the stress on “icing.”

We had high expectations for the next night, November 9, which was supposed to produce an even more vivid aurora display, according to the KP index. On this evening, from 7 p.m. to 2 or three the next morning, we participated in a minibus excursion operated by a company called Best Arctic. This is one of many Tromsø-based companies that roam the countryside in the winter looking for the best location to view the Lights.

There was one problem on this night: the weather was turning against us. The cloud cover had increased throughout the day and the forecast predicted one to three inches of snow by midnight. As we drove out of Tromsø, our Canadian guide, Jacob, tried to moderate our expectations, noting that our chances of seeing the lights on any given night was never zero and never 100%, but “somewhere in between.” Translation: we hope to see something.

With all the clouds hovering over the coast, Jacob said his plan was to get farther inland, where the conditions were dryer (and colder). We ended up traveling 150 kilometers southeast of Tromsø that evening, nearly to the Finnish border. At several spots along the way, Jacob stopped to search for a break in the clouds as we, along with eight other passengers, milled about in the snow. We did see the lights at our first stop, along a country lane, although not as bright as we had seen from the mountain. The aurora was visible for about 15 minutes before the clouds covered it up.  

Our final halt was at Helligskogen Fjellstue, a collection of rental cottages just 11 km from the Finnish border. Jacob took time-lapse photos of each of us that brought out the greenish tint as much as possible from the little bit of aurora we could see.  

Afterward, Jacob and Tor, the driver, served us some hot chocolate and reconstituted beef stew (freeze-dried, with hot water added to the bag). This was much appreciated, given that the temperature now was -6 C. (21 F.), or -10 (14 F.) “real feel.” Then, we piled back into the minivan for the two-and-a-half hour drive back to Tromsø in the face of increasingly heavy snow flurries.  

I devoted much of my attention to massaging my toes; the hour or so spent tramping around in the snow at Hellingskogen had nudged them close to frostbite territory. Bina was less affected, having wisely worn two pairs of Merino wool socks to my one. We were happy to get back safely to our hotel by 1 a.m., by which time the snowfall in Tromsø had begun to moderate. 

The snow returned the next evening, removing any chance of seeing the aurora. That left the following evening, Nov. 11, for our last attempt. After a delicious dinner with Alex and his partner, Bente, we took the cable car to the observation deck cum restaurant atop the mountain and sat there from roughly 9 to 11 p.m. hoping something would materialize.

It was frustrating because the sky was relatively clear on this night; we could see plenty of stars, but no aurora. An English fellow we met showed us an app on his phone that had located an aurora patch just to the east of Tromsø. But it did not shift in our direction during the evening.

As I said earlier, luck plays a big role in viewing the Northern Lights and we were happy that ours, good and bad, had balanced out.