72 days of light

[sholio]

I drove my husband to the airport at 4 a.m. this morning for a business trip. It was broad daylight when we left the house, and the sun was coming up by the time we got to town -- we live out of town a little ways on the highway. We marveled at the post-apocalyptic feeling ... from the quality of the light, it felt like it should be 7 or 8 a.m., but all the parking lots and roads were nearly empty, the businesses closed.

According to the paper, we had our last official "dark" night a couple of days ago; the next one will be 72 days later, on July 27. (i.e. we no longer experience anything darker than civil twilight -- the nights are now bright enough to perform activities outside without needing extra light.) At this point it's still getting noticeably dim at night, but in a week or two it won't even be doing that anymore. We never really get to the point here where the sun literally doesn't set (we're still south of the Arctic Circle, in other words) but by mid-June it's only dipping below the horizon for an hour or so in the very middle of the night.

Hello, two and a half months of light. We have to fill up our daylight tanks in the summer; we'll need it when the winter darkness comes!

Comments

[brightknightie]

Lots of nostalgia for endless summer days... very little nostalgia for endless winter nights! :-D

Thank you for raising memories.

[sophia_sol]

Wow, enjoy all your sun! I get disconcerted enough by the changes in daylight (both in spring and fall) where I live and it's not nearly so extreme here!

[rachelmanija]

Photos please. ;)

[mrkinch]

How does all this light affect the birds? Do they keep some sort of schedule or do they seem to sing and forage and feed young at all hours? I doubt I'll ever get to bird so far north.:(

[lunabee34]

Do the extremes of darkness and light bother you? Do you do different things in the seasons to compensate for light or lack of?

[sheron]

It must make it hard to fall asleep, but it does sound kinda awesome :D

[nenya_kanadka]

Wow! Where I lived in northern BC, the sun would set around 11 pm and start peaking over the horizon around 3 or 3:30 am again, in June/July--or at least that is how I remember it, as an inveterate night owl who many times did not manage to get to bed within that magic window. (Still don't, too often!) I should check official data for the North Peace...

But dang. You've got a whole different ballgame going!

(I don't mind excessive sunlight sometimes, especially now that I own a sleep mask and blackout curtains, though my quality of sleep is better when it's dark out. But good god, winters here at the 49th parallel are bad enough--I do not think I could do significantly more northern climes again. Since I *can't* store the sunlight...!)

[nenya_kanadka]

Second this!

[sholio]

I have to say I miss it terribly when I'm not here - though not the long winter nights!

[sholio]

It can be very hard to adjust to. It seems to happen so fast!

[sholio]

They actually do most of their singing at night! I'm kind of a night owl, and I always hear them singing when I go out at night, especially robins and sparrows and such. Perhaps it seems like dawn to them. I think they just do their thing 'round the clock. They seem to be quieter and not as visible in the afternoons, so that might be when most of their sleeping is done.

[sholio]

It never used to bother me until I lived in the Midwest for four years, and now it really does. I used to be able to sleep through natural daylight, but have a lot of trouble sleeping through artificial light; now I need hardcore blackout curtains to stop me from waking up when the sun comes up, which in midsummer is like 1:30 a.m. It doesn't help that our bedroom is on the east side of the house and there are no trees on that side. We also put a sheet of cardboard over the window in the summer, because even home-theater-style blackout curtains aren't enough to keep out as much of the light as I prefer.

A lot of businesses have extra-long summer hours here because people are out at all hours biking and walking their dogs and playing sports.

[sholio]

Falling asleep isn't nearly as much of a problem as getting woken up by the sun stabbing my eyes at 2 a.m. ...

[sholio]

Yeah, we're almost at the 65th parallel, so it's a big difference! One of my most vivid memories of driving back to Alaska from the Midwest when we moved back in 2004 was how the nights got brighter and brighter (it was June, and we were camping) until sometime around Yukon Territory it just stopped getting dark at all.

I do find the winters hard to take. I wish I could stock up on sunlight during the summer ...

[sholio]

Well, it's sort of hard to take photos because it just looks like how things normally look except it's the middle of the night and it's still light! I took the dog for a walk just now and took my camera, so I took some pictures of the creek ice and the new leaves on the trees at 11 p.m. or so.





The bottom picture is looking more or less due north. The sun both sets and rises in the north in midsummer, so there's a kind of half-assed sunset/sunrise while it's below the horizon. The colors are better than the picture shows; the clouds are really quite pink.

[sholio]

Ask and receive! See this thread: http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1144279.html?thread=17322711#cmt17322711

[rachelmanija]

Crazy! I have to experience this some day. ;)

[chelseagirl]

Is it hard to sleep when it never gets dark?

[lilacsigil]

I've never been above or below the 42nd parallel so this is really fascinating! Do a lot of people have to take vitamin D supplements to get you through the dark?

[ivyfic]

I went to northern Sweden a few years ago at midsummer, and the discombobulation of the light led to things like getting ourselves stranded cause we missed the last bus (cause we didn't realize it was 8PM), and my companion deciding it was the perfect time for a run--at one in the morning.

[roga]

Just... wow.

[lunabee34]

*nods*

That makes sense. I would struggle being transplanted into that environment for sure.

[mrkinch]

Interesting! Birds are pretty quiet in the afternoon here, too, but it charms me to imagine 'dawn chorus' going on all night!

[winter_elf]

Yea, when I visited England in July - that really was weird.... it was like 10pm, it was light out - and everything was CLOSED! In CA, we are more use to stuff being open later, but in the UK, things pretty much shut down at like 5pm - and it never seemed like 5pm! So we got off the bus and were hyped to DO SOMETHING - and couldn't. I was so bummed that there'd be this castle/abbey/ruin/etc and it was RIGHT THERE, it was LIGHT and it was closed :(

[brigdh]

Wow, this is so fascinating! The furthest north I've ever spent significant time was in England, and even there I was impressed by how different the hours of sun were than what I was used to – I can't imagine what Alaska must be like!