Weather conditions and your chances of seeing the Northern Lights on a Tromsø tour

When it comes to the Northern Lights, it’s important to remember one thing: weather is a forecast, not a guarantee. It can change quickly and, especially in this region, it can be inaccurate even just a few hours ahead. That’s why it’s best to join the tour with excitement—but also with realistic expectations.

Tromsø: microclimates and two main climate zones

The Tromsø region is well known for its many microclimates. This means the weather can be completely different just a few kilometers apart. In particular, there are two main climate areas:

• Coastal area (more humid, cloudier, and more changeable)
• Inland area (often drier, colder, and with better chances of clear skies)

It often happens that when the coast is cloudy, the inland is clearer—and vice versa. This is one of the main reasons why checking the weather “in Tromsø city” is often not useful: tours don’t stay in town, they move to wherever conditions are best, and sometimes the weather outside Tromsø is the opposite of what the forecast shows for the city.

Why no tour can guarantee the Northern Lights

No serious operator can promise an aurora sighting, because the Northern Lights are a natural phenomenon. They depend on solar activity and its interaction with Earth’s atmosphere, and they can strengthen or fade unpredictably. On top of that, clouds move and change fast—so a “clear sky” forecast doesn’t automatically mean you will see aurora.

It’s important to know that:

• Even under clear skies, you might not see the aurora if the activity is weak or absent.
• In stormy weather (wind, snow, heavy clouds), there can be sudden clear breaks, and the aurora can appear exactly during those moments.

In other words: there is no absolute rule. The aurora can surprise you when you least expect it, or it may not show up even with seemingly perfect conditions.

What we do during the tour

Our goal is simple: to find the clearest sky possible. To do that, we move based on real-time conditions, not just weather apps, covering a wide area from the coast to inland regions and, if needed, all the way into Finland.

Thanks to this strategy, we achieve about a 90% success rate on the nights we operate—meaning that most evenings we manage to find an area with suitable sky conditions. However, even with the best planning, there are nights when seeing the aurora is not possible.

If we don’t see it: why it can happen

A missed sighting usually comes down to two main factors, both often unpredictable:

1. Weather not matching the forecast (persistent cloud cover, large cloudy areas, sudden changes)
2. No aurora present or aurora too weak at the time and place we are watching

Sometimes both happen together, and despite our best efforts, the result can’t be guaranteed.

The best way to enjoy the experience

The best advice is: stay positive, but realistic. The Northern Lights are one of the most breathtaking natural shows on Earth, but precisely because they are natural, they can’t be controlled. We will do everything we can to chase the best conditions and drive where needed—but nature always has the final say.

Aurora forecasting: what it really means (and why apps can be misleading)

Northern Lights activity can only be predicted with decent accuracy about one hour in advance. That’s because a NASA spacecraft (DSCOVR) measures the incoming solar wind and particles heading toward Earth roughly 60 minutes before they reach us. In practice, this means you can’t reliably decide days in advance which evening will be “the best” for aurora—conditions can change quickly, and the most useful information often comes very close to tour time. For the same reason, we don’t recommend relying on aurora apps: they are approximate, often based on daily averages and broad models that may be relevant somewhere else (and at a different time of day), but not necessarily for our location in the evening. Finally, Tromsø sits right under the Auroral Oval, which makes this area ideal for spotting strong auroras even during low solar activity, as long as the sky is clear.