Sunday 14th January 2024 - Northern Lights Trip - Day 2

We awoke today knowing from the weather models that the only outside chance of getting clear skies would be in Lapland down near the Norway/Sweden/Finland border and even that would be a very small window. I changed the itinery accordingly and told the gang that after we had gone into Tromso to get our Winter Clothes Hire that we would be setting off quite early around 230pm for the 2 and a half hour drive into Finnish Lapland and my favourite restaurant down there called Tundrea! Forecasted temperatures were expected to be between -20c and -25c so this would be the coldest night of the trip seeing as the forecast for Monday to Wednesday had Siberian Easterlies in the forecast for the Tromso area. Any wind from the west near Tromso is not good news for clear skies so the forecast of Easterlies was music to my ears. At about half way we stopped for a quick latte coffee and then took the road to Skibotn, along the route the skies cleared to reveal weak Aurora so we stopped just before the road south into Finland and fired off some shots and the Aurora showed herself in our pictures. Barely 24 hours into the trip and it was already 8 from 8 attempts keeping up our incredible strike rate.

Skies were quickly filling in so we ventured onto the Restaurant in Kilpisjavi and had a lovely Meal and as the temperatures dipped to -22c rare light pillars were noted over the town (These only form in certain atmospheric conditions) Skies were still very cloudy so we all agreed on the 2 hour drive back to Tromso to charge our batteries for the next 3 days left on the trip. Along the way we battled 2 Seperate Blizzards which kept me awake but made it back by 1145pm.