Seeing the Northern Lights in Alaska
· Updated · BootsnAll
Alaska is one of the best places in the world to see the aurora borealis, and Fairbanks in particular, because it sits almost directly under the auroral oval, the ring where the display is most frequent.
Seeing it is a matter of putting the odds in your favour rather than booking a ticket to a show. Here is how to do that.
Three things you need at once
Darkness. This rules out the summer. In June, Fairbanks has essentially no astronomical night, and the aurora is happening overhead where you cannot see it. The season runs from roughly late August to mid-April.
Clear sky. The aurora is around 100 km up and cloud beats it every time. Interior Alaska is the driest part of the state and that is a large part of why Fairbanks is the place to go: the coast is cloudier.
Geomagnetic activity. This is the part you cannot control. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute publishes a forecast, and the aurora also follows the eleven-year solar cycle, with more frequent and stronger displays around solar maximum.
Where to go
Fairbanks is the answer. It has the latitude, the dry interior climate and the infrastructure, and around it are places specifically set up for aurora viewing: Chena Hot Springs, about 100 km out, where you can sit in the hot spring and watch, and the ridges north of town away from the city lights.
Anchorage sees the aurora but less often and less brightly. It is further south, cloudier and has more light pollution. If the aurora is the reason for the trip, do not base yourself there.
Coldfoot and Wiseman, up the Dalton Highway inside the Arctic Circle, are better still and much harder to reach.
How to actually do it
Stay several nights. Three or four gives you a reasonable chance; one night is a coin toss with bad odds. Operators who quote high success rates are quoting over multi-night stays.
Be prepared to be up between about 22:00 and 03:00, which is when the activity peaks. Many hotels in Fairbanks run an aurora wake-up call: you go to bed and they ring you if it starts.
Get away from town lights. A tour does this for you and provides somewhere warm to wait, which matters more than it sounds.
The cold, which people underestimate
Fairbanks in midwinter regularly sits below minus 30 Celsius and can go considerably lower. You will be standing still outdoors, at night, for hours.
That needs proper gear, not a ski jacket: insulated boots rated for the temperature, layers, face covering, and mittens rather than gloves. Most tour operators rent parkas and boots and it is worth taking them up on it.
Phone batteries die very fast in that cold. Keep the phone inside your coat.
What it looks like
Manage the expectation. The long-exposure photographs you have seen are more saturated than the eye perceives; a modest display often reads as a pale grey-green arc that could be cloud until it starts moving.
A strong display is something else entirely, with curtains that ripple and reds and purples that are unmistakable. Those are worth the four nights and the minus thirty.