Northern Lights Forecast for Nome

Northern Lights in Nome

Nome is a town of about 3,700 people on the south coast of the Seward Peninsula, facing Norton Sound and the Bering Sea at 64.5°N, close to the latitude of Fairbanks. No road links it to the rest of Alaska; Alaska Airlines flies in from Anchorage to an airport about 2 miles west of downtown. The sea is in front of the town and the tundra hills are behind it, so the aurora is mostly on the land side, over the hills north of town.

The three roads out of Nome

Town is small, and a few minutes’ drive puts its lights behind you. The Kougarok Road heads north inland toward Salmon Lake, and in winter the state plows about the first 13 miles, enough to get well clear of town. The Teller Road runs northwest and the Council Road east along the coast, and in winter only their first few miles are plowed. Beyond those miles the roads are left to the snow until spring.

Anvil Mountain and the White Alice antennas

Anvil Mountain is a hill of a little over 1,000 ft above town, topped by four Cold War antennas from the mid-1950s, the last ones left from the White Alice network. The rough road up leaves the Teller Road by the Dexter Bypass, about 3 miles from town, and is not maintained in winter, so it is an autumn spot, before the snow.

Alaska time and the late dark

The season runs from about September to April. Nome keeps Alaska time although it lies far to the west, so the sky darkens late in the evening; by mid-May the sun sets after midnight and it no longer gets fully dark. January averages 5.6°F, and the record low is −54°F.

Front Street, the Iditarod arch and the gold rush

The Iditarod ends on Front Street at the burled arch in mid-March, while the nights are still long. The city’s fire siren sounds as each musher reaches the 2-mile mark, and a widow’s lamp hangs on the arch until the last team is in.

Nome grew out of the 1899 gold rush, when gold turned up in the beach sand and the population may have reached 20,000. Abandoned gold dredges stand outside town. The Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum keeps Fritz, a sled dog of Leonhard Seppala, who ran the longest leg of the 1925 serum run. Iñupiat stories warn children who stay out late or walk alone at night that the lights can take them; as Annie Conger of Nome put it, “The northern lights will get you.”