Use the cameras as a yes-or-no check on whether an aurora is happening in Lapland at this moment, not as a view of your own sky. The public all-sky cameras stand in the far north and in central and southern Finland, none of them in Rovaniemi, so a camera showing green tells you the lights are out somewhere north of you, and a camera showing cloud tells you only about that camera's cloud. Pair it with a look at your own sky and the cloud forecast.
An aurora forecast tells you how disturbed the magnetic field is. It cannot tell
you whether the sky somewhere is actually glowing. For that there are cameras:
wide-angle lenses pointed straight up, photographing the whole sky from horizon
to horizon through the night.
Where they are
Finland’s public all-sky camera images are collected on one page of the
Meteorological Institute’s space-weather
site.1
Camera
Where
Run by
Kevo
Far north of Lapland, near Utsjoki
Finnish Meteorological Institute
Kilpisjärvi
North-western tip of Lapland
Finnish Meteorological Institute
Muonio
Western Lapland
Finnish Meteorological Institute
Nyrölä
Central Finland
Jyväskylän Sirius ry
Hankasalmi
Central Finland
Jyväskylän Sirius ry
Metsähovi
Kirkkonummi, southern Finland
Aalto University’s radio observatory
Some of them stop taking pictures in daylight, and the Muonio image is not
updated during daylight
hours.12
Tripadvisor ratings, 18 Rovaniemi operators
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Snowtrail Safaris 5.0
Nordic Odyssey 5.0
Nordic Adventures 4.9
Arctic GM 4.9
Book Lapland 4.9
Bearhill Husky 4.9
Arctic Attitude 4.9
StayLapland 4.8
Wild About Lapland 4.7
Wild Nordic 4.7
Lapland Winter Park 4.6
Safartica 4.5
Nordic Unique Travels 4.5
Apukka Resort 4.4
Lapland Welcome 4.3
Arctic Circle Snowmobile Park 4.3
Arctic Circle Husky Park 4.2
Raitola 3.4
<44.04.55.0
Ratings read from Tripadvisor. The shaded compartment left of the divider holds any score below 4.0. We record the score only; review counts and review text are not part of our comparison.
None of them is in Rovaniemi
The three Lapland cameras are all well to the north and west of Rovaniemi, and
the other three are hundreds of kilometres to the south. That matters because a
camera shows its own sky, including its own clouds. A grey image from Muonio
says nothing about whether it is clear over your cabin, and a clear image from
Muonio does not mean it is clear where you are.
What a camera can tell you anyway
Used for the right question, the northern cameras are still the most direct
evidence available. If Muonio or Kilpisjärvi is showing green, an aurora is
happening over Lapland right now, and the decision becomes a local one: is your
own sky clear, and can you get somewhere dark? If every northern camera is clear
and dark, the lights are quiet for the moment, and an hour later may be
different.
That is the camera’s place in an evening. The forecast tells you whether the
night is promising, the camera tells you whether anything is happening right
now, and your own window tells you about your own cloud.
Reading a Rovaniemi aurora forecast
covers the first part, and
what causes the northern lights
explains why a quiet hour can change so suddenly.
Because there is nothing to see: the aurora is far too faint to show against daylight, and some of the cameras simply stop taking pictures when it is light. The Muonio image, for example, is not updated during daylight hours. In practice the cameras are worth checking from dusk onwards, and in the weeks around midsummer, when the far north never gets properly dark, they show very little at any hour.
Can I see the cameras on my phone?
Yes. They are ordinary web pages on the Meteorological Institute's space-weather site, with no app or account needed, and they load like any other image. Save the page as a bookmark before you go out, because looking it up in the cold with gloves on is slower than it sounds, and a phone screen at full brightness is also the quickest way to spoil your own night vision while you wait.
Is there a camera that shows Rovaniemi?
Not among the public all-sky cameras on the Institute's list. The nearest, by latitude, is the one at Muonio in western Lapland, then those at Kilpisjärvi and Kevo further north; the others are in central and southern Finland. Hotels and resorts sometimes publish their own webcams, but those point at a view rather than straight up at the whole sky, so they show much less of what is happening overhead.
Lapland Handbook is written by its editorial staff in Rovaniemi. Every price, age limit and group size in a comparison is read from the operator's own page and marked "Not stated" when the operator does not publish it. Each guide names who should not book, and names the operator that suits each kind of group, whichever it is.
Rovaniemi's winter tours do sell out – December and the week around New Year first, and the small-group ones before the rest. Booking here goes straight to the operator at their own published price, and the code LH10 takes 10% off it.
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