Sixty-four days of darkness. That’s the amount of days residents in Barrow, Alaska will experience without seeing the sunrise until January 22.
The two-month-long, polar night will begin this coming Friday for those living in the town 1,300 miles south of the North Pole. Over the summer, residents were spoiled with three months of non-stop sunshine, now, the sun will be submerged below the horizon, providing an especially dim light six hours per day in November and three hours each day in December for the “civil twilight.”
Oddly enough, despite historic lows in October, the Arctic Ocean is not frozen this year's as it typically would be, as is rests 300 miles north of the city.
Before the sun eventually rises, the town will be christened with a new name, Utqiagvik, as of December 1. The new title is the native Inupiaq name meaning a “place for gathering wild roots.”
