How does one determine the time when you have 24 hours of daytime and 24 hours of nighttime?

You go to bed at night, the sun still up, a phenomenon known as midnight sun. It shines through your windows, unless those openings in the house are covered with dark curtains or aluminum foils to ward it off.

Then you wake up in the morning; the sun is still there as when you went to bed the night before. You might even wonder if you had ever slept at all. Only when you look at your timepiece you realize it’s time for you to get out of bed or you’re probably late for work already. This condition starts from early May and stretches up to early August, when the sun will be up all day for 80 days of uninterrupted daylight.

The longest day of the year, not necessarily the hottest day, is known as the summer solstice where there is longer daylight. It happens in June of every year.

In late July up to early August, Barrow would have had the highest temperature registered in any of those months in a single day, making the snow-covered frozen sea melt easily. Big and large slabs of sea ice being driven to the shoreline of Barrow from the Arctic Ocean by strong winds continue to melt fast as the sun shines non-stop. It’s a beautiful thing to see and watch. During those months, the Native people waste no time spreading their fishing nets into the sea or bringing out their boats to fish for salmon, whitefish, walrus, and other subsistence fish available in the area. That’s when people say, “It’s damn good day today!” The blessings of more daylight allows many things to accomplish aside from fishing.

By late September or early October, the seas located in the Arctic Ocean are expected to be ice-free.

From November to January, the sun sets, remaining below the horizon for about 69 days. So you think your suffering from the midnight sun is at last over. Yes, that’s right: no more sun. But on those months that you don’t have the sun, darkness enveloped both nighttime and daytime. There is the shortest day or the longest night of the year when there is totally no sunrise. Residents call it winter solstice or polar night. It happens a day in December.

Imagine at noon or at three in the afternoon, where you are supposed to enjoy the heat of the sun, you now have darkness and gloominess. With no entertainment places in Barrow or establishments to hang around at nighttime, the most likely places you would have gone to would be the Alaska Commercial store to look for something to buy, your neighbor’s house for an idle talk over a cup of coffee or booze to some extent or the confines of your home. I would safely assume your residence is adequately lit and not bothered by those intermittent brown outs, which luckily hardly occur in Barrow.

So when the sun doesn’t shine, a soft glowing light emanates from the sky in some mid-afternoon, which Oxford Dictionary terms as twilight: when the sun is below the horizon. The soft glow is produced by the refraction and scattering of the sun’s rays from the atmosphere. There are days when the soft glow becomes slightly visible and there are days it totally disappears.

When it is dark, the day appears to be so depressing with the ambience provided by the gray and white sky – overcast to say the least. At times, the entire atmosphere turns blue, a color that makes everything so gloomy, an indication that light or rays of the sun are obviously absent. What are left that lights up Barrow are lights from the electric posts and the depressing-like atmosphere that the gray and white sky produces.

Coming home from work at five in the afternoon or even six in the evening, you find that everywhere around you is dark. Going to bed early might be tempting if there is nothing to do at home or there is not even a good television program to watch. For those who only have a radio, there is only one station. You might even lose track of the time unless you look at your watch.

As morning comes, it could jolt you to realize that it is still dark, that you feel you should still be sleeping, if you hadn’t set your alarm clock to wake you up. In which case, you could have lost a good night’s sleep or your sleep could have been disturbed every now and then by your constant tracking of the time during the night.

Sometimes, because it is dark in the morning, you might be too lazy to get up or you probably might have thought it is still early to get up. Some people may have a hard time distinguishing the day from the night. So, what time is it? Or something could be terribly wrong in this part of the world. No, sir! On the contrary, it is really like this in Barrow, or in all of Alaska to be precise, where the sun rises or sets only once a year. This is also true in Norway, Iceland, Canada, Sweden, Finland, and Greenland where the sun never sets or rises on the day of the summer or winter solstice, respectively.

The Earth’s tilting position explains why at some period of time, Barrow receives so much sun during summer and so much darkness in winter. When the North Pole points more toward the sun, Barrow would have more sunshine. So, when the North Pole is tilted away from the sun, there would be more darkness. And the fact that Barrow is relatively nearer the North Pole, this explains further why the unusual length of time of brightness and of darkness.

Without any drastic changes or disturbances in the movement of the earth in its orbital path, the sun in Barrow is expected to reappear on the twenty-third day of January next year and every year thereafter. The first day the sun re-appears, a streak of light, or what is known as civil twilight, will be cast into the bright and happy sky illuminating the town for several hours.

Then Barrow will be more alive again.