Northern lights tonight in Ivalo

Ivalo lies at 68.65° N in Lapland, Finland, about 232 km north of the Arctic Circle. With a geomagnetic latitude of about 65.4°, it sits under the auroral oval: even quiet nights (Kp 1–2) can bring aurora overhead. Over the long term, a dark, clear night here has roughly a 69% chance of some visible aurora.

Darkness is never the problem in winter: the sun stays below the horizon from early December to early January, and nights with at least two hours of real darkness run from late August to mid-April. Between late May and mid-July the midnight sun makes aurora impossible to see. Around the winter solstice the sun is more than 12° below the horizon for about 16 hours a day.

Clouds decide most nights. Long-term records for Saariselkä, 26 km away, show night-time cloud cover averaging 70% in March, the clearest month of the season, so roughly 30% of nights are clear then. Check the cloud layers in the hourly forecast above: a short drive can make the difference when cloud is patchy.