Residents Of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, See 30 Minutes Of Sunshine Before The Sun Sets For Two Months

Why Won’t The Sun Rise For 2 Months?

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After only 30 minutes of daylight, the sun will set on the town of Utqiaġvik, Alaska – formerly known as Barrow – for the last time this year on Monday.

This isn’t a sign of imposing doom for residents, though.

This happens every year as the earth’s tilt moves the Northern Hemisphere farther from the sun, carrying anything in the Arctic Circle - any region within 23.5 degrees of the North Pole - out of the sun’s line of sight, causing the onset of “polar night.”

During polar night, the sun never takes so much as a peak above the horizon, preventing there from ever being an actual “daytime.”

(MORE: How Sunrises And Sunsets Change As Daylight Saving Comes To An End)

How long this period lasts depends on how far you are from the North Pole. Polar night Utqiaġvik, America’s northernmost town, lasts for 65 days, while the North Pole itself won’t see the sun for a whopping 179 days.

Civil twilight refers to the part of the day when the sun is within 6 degrees below the horizon. In Utqiaġvik, civil twilight ranges from roughly 3 hours on the winter solstice to 6 hours on the first and last day of polar night.

Because the sun is relatively close to the horizon, there is enough natural light outside to see by.

Meanwhile, cities further north don’t even get to see civil twilight every day of the polar night. Ny-Ålesund, in Svalbard, Norway, goes 84 days from November to February without even civil twilight, so the days are much darker than anywhere in the United States experiences.

Fans Of Sunlight Will Get Their Time To Shine Too: Direct sunlight returns to Utqiaġvik on Jan. 22, 2025, 65 days after it set on Nov. 18, 2024.

The sun will only be over the horizon for approximately 45 minutes, but the days will continue to grow longer and longer from day to day until May 11, 2025, when Utqiaġvik enters the opposite of polar night: polar day.

Blackout curtains and sunglasses are a necessity even at “night,” because the sun won’t set on the town until August.

Sara Tonks is a content meteorologist with weather.com and has a bachelor's and a master's degree from Georgia Tech in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences along with a master's degree from Unity Environmental University in Marine Science.