Utqiaġvik Polar Night | Image: University of Alaska Fairbanks
In the northernmost city in the United States, the sun set at 1:30 pm on Wednesday. It was last set in 2020. It won’t go up again for 65 days. Residents will live in darkness until January 22, 2021.
By then Joe Biden will be the president of the United States.
For Utqiaġvik of Alaska, polar light is a normal phenomenon that occurs every year.
The city will see some hints of light at dawn, called civil twilight, however the sun will remain below the horizon for the next two months.
“There are a few hours each day with enough light to see, but the people who live here have technically seen their last sunset until 2021,” said meteorologist Danielle Banks of The Weather Channel.
Instagram user @kirsten_alburg posted a video of the last sunset of 2020 and wrote: “After a week of cloudy days with no sun, today the clouds cleared enough for us to see and say goodbye to our beautiful and bright friend. The next time the Arctic will see the sun will be January 22 at 1:16 pm “.
She added: “I have to say that tears came to my eyes as I sat on the frozen tundra watching it set. However, as I sit here writing this now, I feel nothing but excitement for the next few days of peaceful darkness and the official start of Polar Night !!!! “
Polar night
Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, lies about 320 miles inside the Arctic Circle, where all latitudes experience a certain length of polar light.
The polar night occurs every winter due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis and “none of the Sun’s disks are visible above the horizon. It only occurs within the polar circles,” according to timeanddate.com.
The phenomenon occurs only within polar circles.
Polar day
The opposite phenomenon, the polar day, or midnight sun, occurs when the sun remains above the horizon for more than 24 hours. During the polar day, the sun does not set for more than two months.
