Spend the night somewhere extraordinary
Pick a place, get into bed there, and fall asleep to the weather outside.
Four places open tonight. Tap a light to go there.
The scene's setting, not live weather
A crew cabin on a North Sea oil platform
NORTH SEA · 57.4°N 1.8°E · 03:17 · Wind 43 mph · Heavy rain (the scene's setting, not live weather)
Sound on. Best with headphones, phone face down.
Field notes Central North Sea, east of Aberdeen
Who is out there tonight
In 2024, 40,023 people travelled offshore on the UK continental shelf, and 22,342 of them spent more than 100 nights of the year out there. The average offshore worker is 44. (OEUK Workforce Insight 2025)
Fish round the legs
A platform works like a reef. Traps set at 10, 50 and 100 metres round a large steel platform caught mostly saithe, haddock and cod. Platforms and their safety zones cover only 0.08% of the North Sea, but a much bigger share of its fish gather round them. (Fujii, 2015; University of Aberdeen, 2011)
Coral on the steel
Cold-water coral grows on the underwater legs. In the northern North Sea, Lophelia pertusa was found on 13 of 14 platforms checked, 947 colonies between 59 and 132 metres down, some growing about 26 mm a year. (Gass and Roberts, 2006)
Porpoises in the dark water
The 2022 summer survey counted about 339,000 harbour porpoises in the North Sea, much the same as in 2016 and 2005. The thickest numbers were in the central and south-western North Sea. (SCANS-IV survey report, 2023; TiHo Hannover, 2023)
Kittiwakes on the platforms
Kittiwakes usually nest on sea cliffs, but in the southern North Sea plenty nest on platforms, and in 2024 the industry and JNCC started counting them. Britain has about 205,000 pairs of kittiwakes, a red-listed bird, and about 350,000 pairs of fulmars. (OEUK, 2024; BTO, kittiwake; BTO, fulmar)
The sea under the bunk
The Greater North Sea covers about 750,000 square kilometres and holds about 94,000 cubic kilometres of water. Nowhere is it deeper than 700 metres, and that deepest water is in the Norwegian Trench, in the Skagerrak. (OSPAR Commission; OSPAR Quality Status Report 2000)
There were hills down there
After the last ice age the southern North Sea was dry land, now called Doggerland, with hills, plains and river valleys. The sea took it over more than 4,000 years, and by around 5500 BC Britain was an island. It was mapped from the seismic surveys made to find oil. (Mesolithic Research Framework)
Sleep timer ended. Goodnight.
A research hut on Svalbard in a polar-night blizzard
SVALBARD · 78.9°N 12.0°E · 02:40 · Wind 45 mph · Blizzard, -18°C (the scene's setting, not live weather)
Sound on. Best with headphones, phone face down.
Field notes Kongsfjorden, Svalbard
Who lives here
On 1 July 2026, 2,504 people lived in Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund, 889 of them from outside Norway. Another 419 lived in Barentsburg and Pyramiden, and 10 at Hornsund. (Statistics Norway)
Polar bears
In August 2015 there were an estimated 264 polar bears on Svalbard itself and 709 more out on the pack ice, 973 in all. The whole Barents Sea population was put at about 2,650 in 2004. (Aars and others, Polar Research, 2017; MOSJ, Norwegian Polar Institute)
Reindeer found nowhere else
Svalbard reindeer live only on Svalbard. There are around 22,000 of them. (MOSJ, Norwegian Polar Institute)
The walrus came back
Walruses were protected on Svalbard in 1952, when only about a hundred were left. A 2018 survey estimated 5,503 in the Svalbard area. (MOSJ, Norwegian Polar Institute)
The other half of the year
The dark ends in spring. In Longyearbyen the midnight sun lasts from 19 April to 23 August, and the sun never sets. (Visit Svalbard)
Seeds in the mountain
Outside Longyearbyen, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is cut into solid rock. It opened on 26 February 2008 and now holds 1,417,799 seed samples from 135 depositors. (Svalbard Global Seed Vault; About the Seed Vault)
No burials in the permafrost
Dying on Svalbard isn't against the law, whatever you may have heard. But nobody has been buried in a coffin in Longyearbyen since 1950, because bodies keep in the frozen ground; the dead are taken to the mainland. Urns could still go in, and the old cemetery closed in 2017 after a landslide nearby. (Polar Journal, 2020)
Sleep timer ended. Goodnight.
An officer's cabin on a container ship in an Atlantic storm
NORTH ATLANTIC · 49.6°N 27.4°W · 03:00 · Wind 58 mph · Storm, heavy rain (the scene's setting, not live weather)
Sound on. Best with headphones, phone face down.
Field notes The North Atlantic, bound for New York
Who keeps the ships moving
About 1.9 million seafarers crew the world's merchant ships, and most of them come from developing countries. (UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2025 (overview))
The world's fleet
On 1 January 2025 there were 112,500 commercial ships, able to carry 2.44 billion dead weight tons between them, 3.4% more than a year before. Greek owners had the most, 16.4% of the capacity. (UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2025 (overview))
Twenty-five people, 400 metres of ship
The Ever Given, one of the biggest container ships, is 399.94 metres long, carries 20,124 containers counted in twenty-foot units, and has a crew of 25. Ships like her usually cruise at 16 to 25 knots. (Wikipedia, Ever Given (no shipping line page with the crew could be read); Wikipedia, Container ship)
Boxes over the side
In 2025 about 1,478 containers were lost at sea, out of roughly 280 million carried, up from 576 in 2024. (World Shipping Council, Containers Lost at Sea, 2026 update)
The long way round
Voyages are getting longer. The average haul went from 4,831 miles in 2018 to 5,245 miles in 2024, as security worries redrew the routes ships take. (UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2025 (overview))
The biggest seas on record
The world record for significant wave height, 19 metres, was measured by a Met Office buoy in the North Atlantic at about 59°N 11°W on 4 February 2013. (gCaptain, on the World Meteorological Organization record (2016))
A gale, not a hurricane
The weather behind that record sea was a very strong cold front, with winds of up to 43.8 knots. On the Beaufort scale that's force 9, a strong gale. (gCaptain, on the World Meteorological Organization record (2016); Met Office, Beaufort wind force scale)
Sleep timer ended. Goodnight.
A lighthouse keeper's cottage on the west coast of Ireland in a gale
WEST OF IRELAND · 52.6°N 9.9°W · 02:15 · Wind 52 mph · Gale, driving rain (the scene's setting, not live weather)
Sound on. Best with headphones, phone face down.
Field notes Loop Head, County Clare, Ireland
The last keepers
No Irish lighthouse has keepers now. Loop Head's left at the end of January 1991, and the last of all were withdrawn from Baily on 24 March 1997. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head; Commissioners of Irish Lights, Baily)
Storm-petrels
About 38% of all the world's European storm-petrels breed in Ireland, and the latest census found their numbers stable. (National Parks and Wildlife Service, Seabirds Count (16 November 2023))
Kittiwakes and puffins
The same census found kittiwakes and puffins in decline. Kittiwakes are down 42% since the count before. (National Parks and Wildlife Service, Seabirds Count (16 November 2023))
Four flashes every twenty seconds
Loop Head's light shows four white flashes every 20 seconds from 84 metres above high water, and reaches 23 nautical miles. The first light here, in about 1670, was a coal fire in a brazier on a stone cottage. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head)
Ophelia's waves
When Storm Ophelia hit in October 2017, the M5 weather buoy measured a single wave of 17.81 metres. The top gust, 191 km/h, was caught at Fastnet lighthouse by instruments almost 70 metres up. (The Irish Times, 18 October 2017)
The fog signal went quiet
Loop Head's explosive fog signal was stopped for good in 1972. Today the light is looked after by an attendant and watched by telemetry from Irish Lights in Dún Laoghaire. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Loop Head)
A post office under the tower
From 1969 to 1972 the post office at Blacksod was in the room under the lighthouse tower, as far as its writer knows the only time an Irish lighthouse held one. In 1865 two firms bid exactly £340 for its light, so the Board drew lots. (Commissioners of Irish Lights, Blacksod)
Sleep timer ended. Goodnight.
A bed at the edge of the world
Some places are best heard from under a duvet. A steel cabin on a platform in the North Sea while a gale goes past. A wooden hut on Svalbard in the polar night, with a blizzard at the window and the stove ticking. Rain on Window puts you there for the night: the view from the bed, the weather all round you, and nothing to do but listen.
You choose how it sounds. Each place has its own sounds to bring up or down, like the storm and the machinery on the platform or the stove in the hut. Then set a sleep timer that fades it all out over the last minute.
Where you can sleep
- A crew cabin on a North Sea oil platform Central North Sea, east of Aberdeen. Open tonight.
- A research hut on Svalbard in a polar-night blizzard Kongsfjorden, Svalbard. Open tonight.
- An officer's cabin on a container ship in an Atlantic storm The North Atlantic, bound for New York. Open tonight.
- A lighthouse keeper's cottage on the west coast of Ireland in a gale Loop Head, County Clare, Ireland. Open tonight.
More places are on the way: the grey lights on the map.
Before you press Start
The time, wind and weather on each scene's card belong to the scene. They aren't live weather. It works best on a phone, face down on the bedside table, or on a laptop with the lights off.