Aurora in Iceland'2026
A hunt for northern lights
I have a great day job. The whole company works remotely, but every once in a while, we meet in person. This time, the meeting was brief - just 2 days - and we had people in both US and Europe. Nobody wanted to fly intercontinental for 2 days, so we decided to meet in Iceland. This was a great opportunity to try my luck with the aurora.
It was October and the weather prospects weren’t great. Historically, there are 22 rainy days in October. But I had to try anyway.
First night
The first night it was almost completely clouded, with only sporadic clearings in low altitude clouds, with the high altitude still covering 100% of the sky. It was a G1 magnetic storm that night. We managed to observe light pillars and faint glimpses of green and pink auroras. It must have been magnificently bright if it was visible through the clouds.
Another attempt
The next two nights were completely cloudy and it was raining some of the time.
The last night the luck and a bit of determination paid off. It was raining in Reykjavik, but the forecast shows an possible upcoming hole in the clouds maybe 80km north from my location. So I did drive there for 90 mins or so, with 60 of it being in heavy rain. I was questioning my own sanity. But it paid off! The sky was never clear, but there were significant parts of the sky clear, with aurora and stars clearly visible!
The conditions were not great, but I was able to observe vivid green bands and few faint patches of pink.
Full resolution photos available on Flickr.
