The blog

Sean Norman Sean Norman

The usual suspects

Red and green arc of northern lights over distant mountains
Green northern lights above frozen lake
 

“All we need are clear skies and patience.”

It is my most sung song. It is everything in aurora chasing and so much of my world.

This time of year, the weather moves so fast. It snows sideways in the streetlights one minute, and ten later, clear skies are overhead. Panic and worry is completely unnecessary, and instead I’m getting used to living in the Icelandic mantra of ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes.”

Nights this week were filled with breathtaking auroras, of course all the way through to the far too early morning. The ice sings loud, the temperatures swing widely, and this morning I stood against the frame of my balcony door with it swung half open, feeling the warmth of the sun with my coffee in hand.

The annual March heatwave has arrived and spring melt is on.

 
 
Cabin in the mountains in winter under Milky Way
Green aurora hiding behind snowy mountain peaks
Aurora curtains above Whitehorse
Pink and green aurora curtains above snowy mountains
Red and green aurora curtains over Yukon mountains
Mountain cabin under starry sky and northern lights
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Sean Norman Sean Norman

A very messy time and an empty blog

 
 

The last month has been me surviving a relatively controlled level of daily chaos, with still far too little sleep and not nearly enough time in the days to keep up blogging.

CaptureOne is littered with nights and nights of aurora chases, all with beautiful stories to tell.

Each night, the hours into the early morning have been the calmest and slowest of my days and weeks. Gentle clear sky chases and magical timing with the aurora has been the soothing I’ve been craving. It’s a time where there’s no rush, nothing else to do but carefully read weather maps and travel slowly out between locations.

This underlying calm is something I’ve always loved more than anything in aurora chasing. There’s always still such excitement for each night, but the underlying calm from a chase of something we have no control over is, in an otherwise completely chaotic time, so soothing.

So here’s a short collection of some of my nights lately, from new moon to full moon.

 
 

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Sean Norman Sean Norman

Equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion

 

A couple of nights with opposite forecasts. “Clear” and “mainly cloudy”, but they meant the same thing, as they usually do… Skepticism of forecasts and predictions, and a subsequent chase into clear sky.

Still they fill me with exhilaration, and equal parts exhaustion.

 
 
Milky way above snowy mountains
Green and red northern lights curtains near Whitehorse
Northern lights above the Alaska Highway
 

 

Dramatic weather is nothing new to Whitehorse, but a few days above freezing at the end of January flipped the city from the most beautiful, hoar frost covered, crisp white winter wonderland into the quintessentially ugly northern spring of gravel, brown slush, and icy deathtraps.

Now, a week or two later as I sit here and write this, heavy snow finally falls outside blanketing all the frozen brown slush after a night of ice fog sat over the city. Low cloud covers the mountains and the sky is just an endless, flat grey tone.

It’s the cosy winter days I dream of.

The most beautiful part in all of that above freezing mess was the melting of so much snow on the lakes. Puddles formed and refroze, reflecting gorgeous colours and intensities of light from the aurora.

The ice became the loudest I’ve heard this year. All through the night, the lake sung in the deepest tones; a constant companion through the -33° night.

 
 
 
Red and green aurora over mountains and a frozen lake
Northern lights and Milky Way over a frozen lake
A couple standing together under the Milky Way and the northern lights
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Sean Norman Sean Norman

A meditative state

Woman sitting in middle of a snowy road in the mountains
 
 

Sitting out on the counter from a late, late bake the night before were some 5-minutes-too-long-in-the-oven scones.

In the morning now, snow just fell and fell and fell from low, overcast cloud. It seemed like every time I looked out the windows, the clouds had gotten lower until none of the mountains were visible at all.

It really was just the cosiest homebody kind of day, where the 11am sunrise blurs into the late afternoon sunset, and my cosy window lights never lose their glow against the sky outside, and we were supposed to be going to the mountains.

We easily agreed to delay 24 hours, leaving plenty of time for a new batch of scones to be over-baked, however I didn’t. Sugar was still nowhere to be found, and these couldn’t be completely inedible, I was mostly pretty sure.

Aside from having to dodge a snowplow a few times, waiting a day was just the best decision. Hot coffee and heartfelt conversation filled the car as we travelled deeper into nature. Fast moving clouds, mountains of snow, and cold, but not frigid, winter air on my face brought back so much Norwegian nostalgia. Time passed far too quickly, and soon we were stumbling down a snowy hillside in the dark.

 
 
Woman walking in middle of snowy road in mountains
Snowy road leading through forest and mountains
Woman standing in snow at edge of a frozen river
Woman touching snow for the first time
Woman touching snow for the first time
Pink sunset over snowy mountains and forest
Woman meditating outdoors in the snow
Woman laughing in snowy landscape

Woman standing on frozen lake watching the  northern lights
 

Sometime while I was sleeping in the late evening after our heavenly afternoon and getting warm drinks ready just before 11pm, the skies had mostly cleared.

Instinctively upon waking up, I look skeptically to the sky in search of cloud banks, double checking weather maps, looking for where the other shoe is going to drop from. I think that’s the years and years of chasing clear sky, obsessing over the weather night after night, for 9 months of the year. But that other shoe wouldn’t come tonight, we were in the clear all evening, but as ever, that’s just half our story.

“Good, but calm. And it would be nice if things were a little bit more unsettled.”

With the weather as close as we come to worry free in Whitehorse, it was onto the aurora conditions which were good, but calm. Full moons in the middle of winter always give some challenges, as beautiful as they are.

We waited as long as we could tonight in the company of the occasionally heard singing ice of the lake. Careful steps out onto the shore cracked the ice under my feet. It was equal parts alarming as calming. There is something so special about the ice. An early morning flight departure eventually brought us back into town. Despite squeezing every last minute out of our clear skies tonight, the aurora remained quiet. Gentle, but beautiful low across the horizon.

Green northern lights arc over frozen lake and mountains
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Sean Norman Sean Norman

A place beyond belief

Northern light curtains above clouds over a highway
 

In quiet conversation and deep trust

I knew leaving Whitehorse we were in for a long night. Weather maps showed hope, but far, far out. So we drove, and drove and drove and drove.

Our first stop around 100km from town was under quickly disappearing clear sky, but it was our first little taste of the stars and some diffuse aurora. I updated maps and continued further to where it looked like what our eyes could make out on the horizon and the weather maps were in agreement on - a large, relatively stable for Iceland Whitehorse, break of clear sky.

I think our timing tonight could not have been more perfect. It was the kind of timing and circumstance that makes you believe in the pure magic of life. Within minutes of stopping under our clear sky, the aurora danced and danced and danced all around and above us, and continued on until morning.

I can never overstate just how much I love these chases. These nights of powerful weather… the mountain scenery, snowy highways and cold, cold winds are some of the most special moments of life.

 
Couple standing together under the northern lights
Couple standing together under the northern lights
A couple stands together on a highway with northern lights dancing above
Northern lights auroral breakup above the Alaska Highway
Green northern lights in and out clouds
Green arcs of northern lights over cloud banks
Pink and green northern light curtains above mountains
Shimmering purple and green aurora above snow capped mountains
Shimmering purple and green northern lights over winter mountains
Shimmering purple and green northern lights over winter mountains
Northern light curtains above the Alaska Highway in Yukon
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