Svalbard conditions now

The latest ice chart

Weekdays after 15:00 UTC, from the Norwegian Ice Service in Tromsø.

1. 0–1Open Water
2. 1–4Very Open Drift Ice
3. 4–7Open Drift Ice
4. 7–9Close Drift Ice
5. 9–10Very Close Drift Ice
6. 10Fast Ice

• Red-orange lines with numbers
• Thick black outlines

Light blue is open water; red is almost solid; grey is fast ice.

What this means for a sailing yacht

We keep to open water and go to the ice edge only when chart, forecast and skipper allow.

Nothing here is a promise of where we'll sail; on the water, weather and ice decide each day.

More

Cap II has a double hull, an ice-plated bow and a protected propeller. Even so, we never plan a route into the ice: we keep to open water and go toward the ice edge only when the chart, the forecast and the skipper all allow it.

The ice doesn't sit still. Wind and current move it, and drift ice off the north coast can move 30 nm in a day, so a chart from yesterday afternoon is already history. The skipper reads it next to the wind forecast and what can be seen from the deck.

Fast ice is off limits: breaking it is banned in Svalbard.

Svalbard rules, explained

What each colour means

• Open Water · 0–1/10 · Light blueLess than a tenth of the surface is ice. Mostly water, with the odd floe.
• Very Open Drift Ice · 1–4/10 · Light greenScattered floes with more water than ice between them.
• Open Drift Ice · 4–7/10 · YellowFloes that mostly don't touch, with leads of open water between them.
• Close Drift Ice · 7–9/10 · OrangeMost floes are touching each other.
• Very Close Drift Ice · 9–10/10 · RedAlmost no water left between the floes.
• Fast Ice · 10/10 · Dark greySolid ice fixed to the coast, in bays and fjords. It's a darker grey than the land.
• Red-orange lines with numbersSea-surface temperature, in °C.
• Thick black outlinesThe Sentinel-1 and Radarsat-2 radar images behind this analysis.

About the chart

Every weekday, Monday to Friday, the Norwegian Ice Service in Tromsø publishes a chart of the sea ice around Svalbard, available after 15:00 UTC. A sea-ice analyst prepares and checks it from satellite data, including radar images that see through cloud and the polar night. It's one of the first things a skipper checks before planning a route north.

Each colour is a concentration: how much of the sea surface is covered by ice, in tenths. These are the categories printed on the chart, which is in English.

How to read it

Model numbers are a starting point, not the view from the deck.

• Wind: metres per second and knots

  Norwegian forecasts give wind in metres per second; sailors think in knots and in Beaufort forces. 1 m/s is about 1.94 knots, so double it for a quick answer. The figure is the average wind: gusts can be much stronger, and this forecast doesn't show them.

• Fjords make their own wind

  Cold air drains off the glaciers and down the valleys, and the fjords funnel it. Out on the water the wind can be much stronger, and from a different direction, than the forecast for the settlement.

• Waves: significant height

  MET Norway gives the significant wave height, roughly the average height of the highest third of the waves. Single waves can reach close to twice that. These are single model points inside Isfjorden and Kongsfjorden; the open sea outside is usually rougher.

• The sea is the real cold

  Even in summer the sea here is cold: the Atlantic water off the west coast is only about 6–8 °C, and near the ice it is close to freezing (sea water freezes at about −1.8 °C). Falling in is the real danger on an Arctic deck: cold shock in the first minute comes long before hypothermia.

The light at 78°N

About four months of midnight sun, nearly as long a polar night.

More Arctic tools

• Aurora forecast, Tromsø
• Midnight sun calculator
• Arctic packing list
• Svalbard rules explained
• All Arctic tools