Seeing the Northern Lights requires two things: solar activity and clear skies. We’ve been lucky on the clear skies so far – one of the advantages of visiting in February is that there are more clear nights – but a downside of clear skies is that a lack of clouds leads to MUCH colder nights; tomorrow will be our third straight day where temps are around -20F. Solar activity hasn’t been particularly high, but there is still enough that the lights are visible in the evenings, with occasional bursts that light up the horizon for thirty minutes at a time.
Aside from late night light shows we didn’t do much today given the cold. Once it had warmed up to a still-deadly -10F we hopped in the car and took a drive to see the snow-covered landscape, the F-35s at Eilsen Air Force Base, the art and taxidermy at the Knotty Shop, Santa’s Workshop in North Pole (which ironically is south of us), and then we resupplied in Fairbanks before returning to our warm room for another evening of Aurora photography.
