That week in March when the aurora forecast was wrong three days in a row

3 comments

3 Comments

The only time I had that happen was back in February when I was chasing the northern lights near Fairbanks. I kept refreshing the apps every night and they kept saying high activity but we got nada. What finally worked was switching to the live aurora webcams instead of relying on the forecasts. The webcams showed actual real-time conditions and I could see a faint glow starting before any alert went off. We bundled up and drove twenty minutes east of town and caught a decent show around 2am. Sometimes you just have to eyeball it yourself instead of trusting the predictions.

felix_hayes641mo ago

That exact thing happened to me in February too actually. Drove two hours north of Anchorage based on the apps and got skunked for three nights straight. @grantmartinez is right about the webcams being way more reliable than those forecasts. I started checking the UAF Poker Flat cam every 15 minutes instead and finally caught a real show around 3am.

grantmartinez1mo ago

@susanm56 ngl I used to think the apps were gospel but you just changed my mind lol