Aurora Borealis - The side quest to Yellowknife
I’ve seen shooting stars and I’ve seen comets and eclipses, but even on our Disney Alaskan cruise, we never saw the Northern Lights.
The idea didn’t come up until we were in Fairbanks, and we did a day trip to the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North. At the museum, they house a planetarium that shows a short film every couple hours. We added onto our admission, the short film, Aurora Lights of Wonder. In the film, it gives a brief explanation of what the Aurora is, along with breathtaking views of the northern lights, filmed in the capital of the Northwest Territory of Canada, Yellowknife. Now, Yellowknife was not on our itinerary, and it was still early enough in the summer that the sun didn’t really set where we were yet. But, our brilliant navigator, got the itch to see the Northern Lights in person.
On our planned itinerary, we were going from the Dempster “aka Dumpster” Highway, to Dawson City, then to Dawson Creek, on our way to Edmonton, Alberta. As amazing as she is, she discovered that we could take a little side quest north from Dawson Creek, up to Yellowknife, and only add about a week of travel to the trip. Since we’re on no timeline, other than staying ahead of winter, we added it to the plan. Now, Jamie also did research that if you stay in Yellowknife, starting in mid-August, for three nights, you have a 90% chance of catching the Aurora. Well, it just so happened, it was mid-August when we got there. Jamie booked us a campsite for three nights and then we’d go to Hay River, which is on the south side of the large lake that Yellowknife was on the north side of. All we had to do, was pray that the weather gods would not let us down. Not like rain has been following us this entire trip …. right?
A little background on the Aurora. First and foremost, what is it. The blessed star that lights our planet, the Sun, also sends streams of super charged particles flying through space, solar flares. These super-charged particles fly through space as solar winds and shoot at our planet. Thankfully, due to our molten iron core, we have created a magnetic field around us. At the north and south poles, there is a stronger magnetic pull that sometimes, grabs some of these charged particles and pulls them down into our atmosphere. These particles, crash into the gasses of the planet and create colors. Greens when it crashes into lower oxygen, reds for higher altitude oxygen and purples, blues and pinks when colliding with nitrogen. This is essentially the same reaction we get with neon lights. Green being the most common view is why you see more postcards and fantastic photographs showing green. That’s the limit of my scientific knowledge, so back to the plan.
Three nights in Yellowknife. The first night, the forecast for the Aurora was considered low. Just as a test, I set up the Insta360 camera on the roof of the camper to take a timelapse of the sky. Since there was little chance in the forecast, I didn’t expect to capture anything other than planes, high clouds whisking by and maybe a UFO or something. What it turned out to be was the best viewing night, but since we didn’t expect anything, we didn’t get up in the middle of the night to witness it ourselves. It wasn’t until I reviewed the footage that we saw what we missed.
The second night was forecast to be one of the more active nights for Aurora viewing, but there was also rain in the forecast. It had been 100% clear all day; there was no way that a storm was going to roll in after sunset. I was hoping with all my might that the Weather Channel was wrong. Unfortunately, they were not wrong. It was as if Mother Nature herself was like, “you don’t want to see this. It’s boring, old news. How about some lightning and rain?” In the video, you can see that the Aurora is just starting before the view gets blocked by a thunderstorm that went on all night.
Our third and final night in Yellowknife once again, called for more rain. The timelapse camera captured some amazing cloud movement but did not capture any Aurora. I had even set alarms for getting up at 1AM and 2AM in an attempt to see if it was possible to view anything but the pitter patter of rain on the roof assured us that we were not going to see anything that night.
It turned out that the first night, when we thought there would be nothing to see, we missed the best show. It was true that if you spend three nights in Yellowknife, you have greater than a 90% chance of seeing Northern Lights, as long as it’s after mid-August and there’s no weather in the forecast. We still have a few more opportunities as we get into Saskatchewan, so our fingers are definitely crossed. We are happy we captured lights on the camera, but it doesn’t seem to compare to the chance we had to be able to walk out of the camper, allow our eyes to fully adjust and take in the actual sight. Some North American tribes viewed the lights as distant campfires lit by the earth’s creator to signal they were still watching over us. All we know is WeirbackOnTrack and we’ll keep our heads held high in hopes we get another chance.
Here’s the videos in order, night one, two and three:
