Monday 15th January 2024 - Northern Lights Trip - Day 3

23 Jan

We awoke to 10cm of overnight snow but skies were clearing from the east and continental air was flooding in from the east with the Mountains east of Tromso blocking the clouds and keeping offshore flow making skies clear for our Fjords Tour today. This is always good when photographing the beautiful Fjords and Snow covered mountains and makes for amazing photography!

We stopped at our usual Deli on the road out of Kvaloya and heading for Katfjord and Tromvik. This is a beautiful route with numerous stopping points along the way and also a chance to see wild reindeer and nature along the way. After stopping for lunch I showed the guys our likely viewing point for the clear skies this evening and then headed back for around 3pm so we could prepare food for a likely 6pm leaving time.

After checking various cloud cover models my mind was made up on 60km west of Tromso to a viewing point just south of Tromvik. We arrived and waited, various Tour Vans started to arrive and just before 8pm numerous tour groups were surrounding us. Things started to get interesting the Aurora Oval was starting to get strong and between 8pm and 10pm we were treated to a stunning show. Temperatures were down to -14c and a Substorm had arrived promoting really bright vibrant Aurora with a ribbon effect I have never seen before. Everybody was overjoyed and lots of oohs and aaahs were ringing out on top of that mountain.