Success! We really came to Iceland to see a good aurora borealis show. After 11 days of solid overcast and frequent rain, we were beginning to think we would have to settle with that little distant bit of Northern Lights color we saw on Nov 15.  The forecast for tonight was clear from 10PM to 2AM in the Snaelfellsnes Peninsula, with solid cloud cover before and after that window.  We decided to drive out to Kirkjufell mountain and  waterfall that Johnathan knew of and try our luck. It turns out that there are several NASA aurora forecast sites in addition to http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/ to forecast both aurora activity as well as cloud cover on an hourly basis.

The clouds cleared and the wind died down (the wind had been blowing strong for the past 11 days too).  Suddenly the light show started, and we had ringside seats.  The still winds meant that we even had rare reflections in the lake below the falls. We had four hours of excellent viewing.  Just as the show was dying out around 2AM, the clouds came in again and the wind began blowing.  Time to go home and edit what we captured!

Earlier in the day we had visited a lighthouse and the surrounding beach.  It was a nice day of exploring, but couldn’t hold a candle to that aurora display later that night…