The residents of Utqiagvik in Alaska have watched their last sunset of this year and they will not see one until January next year. Some 4,300 residents of America’s northernmost town Utqiagvik formerly known as Barrow watched their last sunset at 1:30pm (PT) on Wednesday, November 19, 2020, and will witness the next after 66 days to the annual 'polar night.' Utqiagvik is located at a latitude of 71.29 Degrees North, which is slightly above the Arctic circle, because of its unique geolocation the area witnesses the long Polar Night period.
According to TimeanDate.com website, this phenomenon only occurs within the polar circles and Polar Night’s are the result of Earth tilting away from the Sun during winters and when none of the Sun’s disc is visible above the horizon at all.
Hopefully, by then president-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States and they may even have Covid-19 vaccine available by then. However, for the residents of this town, the Polar Night is an annual feature and is quite normal to them. The National Weather Service in Fairbanks posted on Twitter saying that the sun will not rise again until January 23, 2021, in Utqiagvik.
At 1:30pm AKST this afternoon, the sun will set and Utqiaġvik will enter a 66 day period of polar night. The sun will rise again on January 23rd, 2021. #akwx pic.twitter.com/iN4KXGxBh9
— NWS Fairbanks (@NWSFairbanks) November 18, 2020
According to Carson Frank, an associate at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in a phone interview with USA Today said that Alaskans have already begun preparations and stocked up on Vitamin D supplements. They also rely on ‘happy light’ which stimulates daylight indoors.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks created the Utqiagvik Sea Ice Webcam that shows that city undergoing polar night.
The residents of the remote town have already begun preparations for the long night and can expect to spend most of the days in the warm comfort of their homes as on most days temperatures plummet to single digits.