Northern Lights Forecast for Churchill

Northern Lights in Churchill

Churchill is a town of about 870 people on the west shore of Hudson Bay, at the mouth of the Churchill River in northern Manitoba. No road reaches it. It sits at only 58.8°N, but the geomagnetic pole lies over Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Arctic, so Churchill is much closer to it than its latitude suggests and gets aurora on quiet nights.

Belugas, then bears, then the aurora

Churchill has three visitor seasons. Thousands of beluga whales come into the river estuary in July and August. Polar bears gather on the coast in October and November, waiting for the bay to freeze. The aurora season is February and March, when the operators run their aurora programmes and the sky is at its clearest: the town averages 118 hours of sunshine in February and 178 in March, against 80 in January.

February averages −24 °C and March −18.6 °C. Hudson Bay is frozen by then, so from the shore the view north is a flat white plain.

The Northern Studies Centre on the old rocket range

The Churchill Northern Studies Centre is about 23 km east of town on the site of the old Churchill Rocket Research Range, inside the Churchill Wildlife Management Area. It has guest rooms and an indoor aurora dome, and runs its Winter Skies programme in February and March. The rest of the watching is done from heated tundra vehicles parked at the edge of the frozen river, or from the operators’ viewing domes.

Polar Bear Alert and walking after dark

Walking out to a dark spot is another matter. Parks Canada’s advice for Churchill is never to walk in dimly lit areas, to take a taxi after 10 p.m. in autumn if your group is three or fewer, and not to walk or cycle out of town in September, October or November. The same advice says not to lock your vehicle, because you may need to get back in quickly. Bears that come into town are hazed out by Polar Bear Alert staff, and repeat visitors go to the Polar Bear Holding Facility until the ice has formed and they can be released onto the bay. By the aurora months the bears are out on the ice, and December to July is the period of lowest risk.

Two nights on the train from Winnipeg

VIA Rail’s train from Winnipeg covers 1,710 km in about 45 hours. You can also drive to Thompson and board there. Calm Air flies from Winnipeg year round, about two hours in the air.

Itsanitaq Museum and Prince of Wales Fort

The Itsanitaq Museum, founded in 1944 as the Eskimo Museum, holds about 1,300 Inuit carvings, tools and boats. Prince of Wales Fort, the stone fort across the river mouth that surrendered to the French in 1782 without a shot, is reached by boat and closed outside the summer.