Alaskans get asked a lot of questions about that. Everyone's heard of the "Land of the Midnight Sun", and wants to know all about it. Myths about Alaska abound: no, we don't live in igloos. And no, it's not covered in snow year-round. But about the solstice ...
Q: "Is it true the sun never sets?"
A: No, Anchorage isn't far enough north for that to happen. We're 500± miles south of the Arctic Circle, north of which that phenomenon occurs.
Here's what does happen: today, it was light enough to see where you're walking at 2:33 a.m. It will not get truly dusky again until 1:28 a.m. tomorrow. That's 23 hours of daylight, give or take.
To put it another way, we're required by law to have our headlights on from around 11:10pm until 3:50am tomorrow. But we don't really need 'em, this time of year.
Of course it's been cloudy all day, with only short breaks of sunlight. But it's not important ... this sunny spell of "almost always light" lasts for six or seven weeks. Yes, the days will start getting shorter again tomorrow, but we won't have days shorter than, say, St. Louis until late October.
Then the daylight hours will dwindle down to about 4 1/2 hours in December - but that's another post.
4 comments:
Interesting, as always. Today I could not wait for the sun to go down here. It has been hot for the last couple of days.
Hm.... at 4 hours a round, I could get FIVE rounds of golf in ... :-)
I would be loving that...
The short days would do me in...ours don't get anywhere near that short and I get really messed up. However, the long days don't sound too awful, although I would miss the fireflies
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