Why am I not seeing the Aurora on my island?

[bam94-]

On two occasions now, I’ve had villagers tell me during the day that “we’re in for a spectacular show tonight” and there’ll be “dancing lights in the sky” and even straight up saying there’ll be an Aurora tonight.

But on both occasions, I’ve played at night and there’s been no Aurora? It’s even been cloudy. I’ve been playing when it was dark, and I saw that the Aurora is meant to be brightest at 9pm... I’ve played before 9 and after 9 and the Aurora wasn’t there either time?

Has anyone had villagers talk about the Aurora and actually seen it that night? I was really looking forward to seeing it!

 

[JellyBeans]

I've had villagers talk about it and then actually seen it! I could be wrong on this but I think there are certain times at which the borealis is visible, and other times where it isn't, within one night. for example I've had the borealis be visible at 7, and then not seen it again until 9, whereas on other nights I've only been able to see it at 10pm. it all depends on your weather seed really!

 

[ivelostmyspectacles]

In my experience, they pop up at the most random times of night. Sometimes, I'll have a villager ping me and I'll have the aurora at 8 pm. Tonight, I logged in at 2 am and it had only just started In all likelihood, you're probably just not lucking out at being on at the right time...

They usually pop past 11 for me, but I'm a late night player anyway, so I'm not sure if that has any effect or not!

 

[Roxxy]

I have had it once but the sky was so cloudy it was such a disappointment hopefully if I am lucky enough to see it again it will be a clear night

 

[bam94-]

Thanks everyone. So I’ve just been unlucky! I can’t often play for a long period of time in the evening so the chances of me catching it are probably quite slim!

 

[Junalt]

If you managed to get your weather seed from the MeteoNook site, it would actually tell you the hours the Aurora will appear. It appears to be random, I checked 2 different days of upcoming Aurora on my island and one night only has it at 10PM and 3AM and the other night has 6 different hours of it.

 

[JKDOS]

Auroras are pseudorandom, they are not random. They are tied are tied to your weather seed, and like rain the aurora lasts only for the scheduled hour, though multiple occurrences can happen in the same night. The earliest you can see one is 7pm.

You'll need to to consult your weather forecast to get the exact hour it shows up. The most common time for auroras to show up appears to be 10pm.

 

[bam94-]

I managed to see them last night! I just randomly hopped on the game not long after 7pm and they were there!

 

[Rosch]

All my aurora days had it on 10PM, but I'm too tired to play the game at that hour. So I ended up not seeing nor managed to take a photo of it.

EDIT: Just checked February and I have 6 aurora days and some of them have 7PM. Guess I won't miss out at all.

 

[IndiaHawker]

Do we go through phases where we have it more than other times, as I’ve had it loads lately, sometimes back to back nights, but nothing like this before I don’t think! Don’t even know if I’d seen it before this bout

edit, didn’t mean this as a humblebrag hahah

 

[Pintuition]

Do we go through phases where we have it more than other times, as I’ve had it loads lately, sometimes back to back nights, but nothing like this before I don’t think! Don’t even know if I’d seen it before this bout

edit, didn’t mean this as a humblebrag hahah

Definitely from my experience! Initially I was disappointed that I never saw an aurora but within the last week I've had one almost every single night. At this point I'm waiting for my luck to run out! I tend to not have meteor showers almost ever (only ever had 2 since last April) so I'm pumped to at least have the auroras!

A thing I've noticed is that each time I have an aurora it starts to form around 7:30-ish and pretty consistently forms at that time. I'm not sure that is universally true for every aurora I have but it certainly seems to be. Maybe each island has a set time they're more likely to appear.

My villagers haven't teased an aurora that never happened before. However, on my friend's island we were teased with an aurora, all went over to see it, stayed two hours, and it never came. My friend said hours later even at midnight there was no aurora. So in that case the villagers did mention an aurora that never happened much like what happened to the OP.