Northern lights over Fairbanks, Alaska

In winter, the sun in Fairbanks is up for only a few hours.

It rises late in the morning and sets in the afternoon. Then the long night begins. In summer, it is the other way around.

Around the winter solstice on 21 December, the sun in Fairbanks barely clears the mountains to the south at midday. In 2020, it was above them for only 3 hours and 41 minutes. Darkness can last about 18 hours.

In the fall, Fairbanks loses daylight fast: about six minutes a day by September. After the solstice the light comes back, a few seconds at first, then minutes. By New Year's Day there are more than four hours of possible sunlight, and by the spring equinox Fairbanks has as much daylight as cities far to the south.

Rozell's columns give the shape of the dark season. At the 2020 solstice the sun was visible above the mountains for 3 h 41 min on 20 and 21 December; it gained 20 seconds on 22 December, then 40 more and another minute on successive days, and New Year's Day had more than four hours of possible sunlight. In his 2022 column, daylight was being lost at about six minutes a day by September and about four minutes a day by mid-December, darkness lasted about 18 hours, and the sun barely cleared the Alaska Range at solar noon.

The imbalance runs both ways: citing climatologist Brian Brettschneider, he wrote that by 8:30 a.m. on 1 December 2022, Tucson had received as much solar energy as Fairbanks would get all month, yet the previous June Fairbanks got more sunshine in one day than Tucson in two. In November 2025 he noted nights twice as long as days.

The northern lights are made far above the clouds.

Tiny bits from space crash into the air and make it glow. Most often the glow is green. Sometimes it is red or blue.

The aurora's energy comes from the solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing from the sun. Near Earth, electrons are pushed along Earth's magnetic field toward the poles. When they crash into the thin air high above, they make it glow.

The usual green-yellow light comes from oxygen about 60 miles (100 kilometers) up, where the bottom edge of the aurora usually sits. Nitrogen gives blue light, and rare red auroras come from oxygen much higher, about 200 to 300 miles up. The glow forms in two rings around the magnetic poles, and Fairbanks sits under the northern ring.

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center describes the aurora as the result of electrons colliding with the upper atmosphere: electrons accelerated in the night-side tail of the magnetosphere and along auroral field lines follow Earth's magnetic field toward the poles and excite atoms and molecules, which emit light as they return to lower energy states. It forms 80 to 500 km above the surface, in two ovals centered roughly on the magnetic poles, which expand away from the poles in major geomagnetic storms.

The Geophysical Institute names the solar wind as the ultimate energy source and gives the colors: green-yellow from oxygen at about 60 miles, blue from nitrogen, and red from oxygen excited much higher, roughly 200 to 300 miles up. In its quiet state the oval is a thin band around 67-68° geomagnetic latitude. NOAA puts the best viewing between about 60° and 75° latitude, where aurora can be seen on more than half of the nights in a year; Fairbanks is at about 64.8°.

To see the northern lights, you need a dark, clear night.

The best time is around midnight. People go to a hill, away from the town lights, and look up. They get ready for the cold!

In summer, the sky over Fairbanks stays too bright at night to see the aurora. The University of Alaska Fairbanks says the viewing season runs from about 21 August to 21 April. The best time is the three or four hours around midnight.

Watchers head to a hill away from city lights, with a clear view of the horizon. They check the forecast too. It uses the Kp index, a scale from 0 to 9 for activity in Earth's magnetic field. Above 5 counts as a geomagnetic storm, when the aurora can spread much farther south.

The Geophysical Institute's forecast FAQ: at latitude about 64.8, Fairbanks's season is roughly 21 August to 21 April, because summer skies are too bright as the sun climbs toward the 21 June solstice. The best viewing is the three or four hours centered on midnight, with 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. the likeliest window for strong displays over interior Alaska in winter. Visitors should watch from a hill away from city lights with an open horizon, and be prepared for extreme cold, when small problems can become emergencies in remote areas.

Forecasts use the Kp index, a 0-9 scale of geomagnetic activity; anything above Kp 5 is a geomagnetic storm. In November 2025, a storm driven by three solar eruptions, expected to be the strongest of the year, produced a rare red aurora over Fairbanks, which Rozell said he could compare with only one display in his 40 years in the city.

Winter in Fairbanks can be very, very cold.

On very cold nights, cars can be plugged in to a heater, so they will start in the morning. In the coldest weather, a foggy cloud of ice can fill the streets.

At 40 below zero, the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales show the same number, and Fairbanks sometimes gets that cold. A Geophysical Institute column from 2007 describes a family's morning at 40 below: the car had been plugged in overnight to warm its antifreeze, a heated blanket kept the battery working, and a tire with a flat spot bounced until the rubber warmed up.

In deep cold, ice fog can form, a low cloud of tiny ice bits made from water vapor that people, cars and power plants put into the air. It forms at about 30 below Fahrenheit.

Rozell's 2007 column notes that -40 is the only point where Fahrenheit and Celsius agree, that thermometers use alcohol because mercury freezes at 38 below, and describes a plugged-in car with a heated antifreeze element and a battery blanket keeping the battery near 20 °F, about half its summer cranking strength. Exhaust leaves the tailpipe near 250 degrees and cools to -40 in under ten seconds, becoming ice fog.

Ice fog, a surface cloud of water vapor that people constantly emit, forms at about -30 °F. Cars add to it: the water vapor from an exhaust is 1.3 times the mass of the gasoline burned, and exhaust is the main cause of poor driving visibility in it. In the late 1960s, glaciologist Carl Benson found power-plant cooling water a major source; today, a major one is a stretch of the Chena River kept open by that warm water. Lea Hartl of the Alaska Climate Research Center found (2023) that Fairbanks averaged more than two weeks of ice-fog days a year in 1950-1980 but only about six in 1990-2020, mainly because there are far fewer days below -30 °F (Rozell, 2024).