STORM2K

With the sun angle inching higher in the Northern Hemisphere, Barrow, AK will see its first sunrise since 11/18/07 this coming Wednesday, January 23rd at 1:12 PM!!!

Barrow NWS link:
http://pabr.arh.noaa.gov/

Barrow live webcam:
http://db.aoos.org/webcam/latest/ABCam.jpg

if i were them, i'd be so excited i wont be able to sleep from now til then. Can you imagine the disappointment then when its all overcast, as it probably will be.

My question for anyone living above the Arctic Circle is how do you continue with your normal living, work schedule, when you're always in darkness, or always with sunshine?

I feel that a human that has always lived between the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, it will feel very awkward to not see a sunrise every morning and a sunset every afternoon.

I could live up there...it would remind me too much of the movie 30 days of night.

While I can't fully speak for those who live in the Arctic, I have experienced similar live myself. With my job, I rotate shifts frequently. For the past few years, I've been working three-month rotations that consist of day shifts (7am - 3pm), swing shifts (3pm - 11pm), and mid shifts (11pm - 7am).

I have found that whenever mid shifts and wintertime coexist, I live without sunlight for weeks. By the time I get home at work (7:10am), it's still dark outside and I immediately go to bed. By the time I wake up (4 or 5pm), it's already sunset. This was even worse when I lived in Germany. Often, I found myself without ANY daylight. I'd go to bed at work before dawn and wake up after dusk.

It starts to affect me after a week or so. I can't really say that I'm depressed, but that's probably the best word that I can think of to describe it. Eventually, trade off sleep for a little bit of sunlight, just to get the body going again. Bottomline, however, you just have to deal with it. I kept reminding myself that while it sucks during the winter, I make up for it with longer days in the summer.

The worst thing for me in Germany would be working the mids and see the Sun come up and know that I still had half of my shift left.

Steve

I'd move if I lived in Alaska. Even with a check from the state each year, the painfully low humidity, long winters, short summers, bad male-female ratio, lack of pro sports. I'd have to move.

Aslkahuna wrote:The worst thing for me in Germany would be working the mids and see the Sun come up and know that I still had half of my shift left.

Steve

Yeah, that was definitely a problem during the Summer while working mids.