Northern Lights Forecast for Yellowknife

Northern Lights in Yellowknife

Yellowknife is the capital of the Northwest Territories, a city of about 20,000 that grew from a 1930s gold camp on the north shore of Great Slave Lake. Destination Canada puts its aurora count at up to 240 nights a year and credits the distance from any ocean coast and the dry winters.

Two seasons, and the freeze-up between them

The autumn season runs from late August, once the nights darken, to late September or early October, while the lakes are still open and calm nights put the aurora in the water. From early October to mid-November the lakes freeze and the sky mostly clouds over; Environment Canada’s normals give October and November about a fifth of the possible sunshine, against half in March. The cloud breaks in mid to late November as the air dries, and the winter season runs from then to early April. January averages −25.5 °C.

Old Town, Frame Lake and the Pilot’s Monument

Active displays show from inside the city. In Old Town a wooden staircase climbs The Rock, where the first water tower stood, to the Bush Pilot’s Monument, which looks over Great Slave Lake, Back Bay and the north of the city. Old Town runs out onto Latham Island, with N’dilo, one of the two Yellowknives Dene communities, at its tip. Downtown, Somba K’e Park looks across Frame Lake to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, the territorial museum.

The Ingraham Trail: Prosperous Lake to Cameron Falls

Highway 4, the Ingraham Trail, runs 69 km east to Tibbitt Lake. Tour buses from the hotels stop on the shore of Prosperous Lake, about 20 km out, and Madeline and Pontoon lakes are a few kilometres further on. At Prelude Lake, about half an hour from town, a short trail climbs from the campground to a lookout facing north, and around km 46 a trail of about 1.5 km leads to Cameron Falls.

On the ice of Yellowknife Bay: the Dettah road and the Snowking’s castle

Once the ice on Yellowknife Bay is thick enough, a six-kilometre road is built across it to Dettah, the other Yellowknives Dene community, on the east shore and 27 km away by the Ingraham Trail. It mostly opens around the turn of the year and lasts to about mid-April. Each March the Snowking Winter Festival, first held in 1996, fills a snow castle on the bay’s ice, with an auditorium, a café and a slide.

Flying in, or the long drive over the Deh Cho Bridge

Yellowknife Airport, on the west side of the city, has direct flights from Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. The drive from Edmonton is about 1,500 km, crossing the Mackenzie River on the Deh Cho Bridge near Fort Providence.