Comments

  1. RJW says

    Dark at 4:30? Jeeeeez.

    Hello from latitude 38S, flowers in bloom everywhere and the tomatoes are thriving, nothing like a home grown tomato.

  2. Brian E says

    Down here, 37 point something south it gets dark at 5:30 or so in mid-Winter. You must have long days in mid-Summer though. Today is bright and sunny. Not hot though.

  3. yazikus says

    Is it raining? I don’t mind the short days too much, nothing like when I lived in Finland. I think I saw that their polar night starts tonight.

  4. says

    You guys don’t know dark. I live at 63.4°N, and the sun is up for less than six hours per day. At winter solstice, four and a half. But on the flip side, that means more than nineteen hours of sun at mid-summer! And of course plenty of people in Norway, where I live, don’t see the sun at all for a month’s time, starting soon.

  5. Blanche Quizno says

    Harald – [edited for totally random rude observation – OB] – one year, I went to my cousin’s wedding up in Alaska. The wedding was at the summer solstice – it didn’t get all the way dark at night. When you got tired, you retired and pulled the drapes! I imagine the winters must be very dark… And during summer abroad the year of the PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike (don’t ask), I was in Paris. I remember how late it got dark – it seemed close to 11 PM at night! I remembered that detail to my son, who went on a trip to Paris this summer – he confirmed how oddly late it got dark there. He came home quite sleep deprived, having been unable to go to sleep while it was still light, yet still expected to get up and get going so early in the morning…

  6. Trebuchet says

    As a fellow Puget Sounder, I feel Ophelia’s pain. In fact this year is the first time I’ve begun to understand the “snowbird” phenomenom. In compensation, we did have an absolutely LOVELY Spring, Summer, and much of Fall.

  7. says

    I used to experience those sorts of “days” and don’t miss them at all. I lived at 54°N for about 20 years and had December days of 9:30-3:30, snow up to the chest every winter. But that was delightful compared to living near the Arctic Circle for six months, December “days” of less than four hours. You watch the sun rise on your first coffee break, and watch it set on the second.

    I am so glad I now live in Taiwan, and not just for the weather. (It was 27°C today.) December days here are eleven hours, and “winter” means 10°C, maybe 5°C. The Taiwanese wear winter coats in January while the waiguoren like me go out in t-shirt and shorts. I always get a laugh seeing the disbelief on their faces.

  8. says

    I didn’t really intend to express pain – more just an appreciation of spots of brightness. I actually like winter here, and I’m not minding this one overall yet…except that the closing in at 4:30 does seem to feel a little more claustrophobic than usual. (Or I could just be forgetting that it’s felt that way in the past.)

    It has been especially dark though, I will say that. Lots of very dark very low clouds for many days in a row.

    But nothing like Hammerfest or Yellowknife or Barrow.

  9. says

    Blanche: Same thing here. At midnight around midsummer, if the skies are clear you can read outside. And I don’t mean on a laptop or tablet, but on paper. It does make up for the dark winter days. This time of year, I use a very bright light to get me going in the morning. I get up and make coffee, take it back to bed, turn on my sunlight simulator lamp and catch up with news, including B&W of course.

    But Hammerfest is in a totally different league again. (Ophelia, how come you know about Hammerfest? Been there?)

  10. says

    I like winter here, too. After months of the sunrise waking me up at 5:30am and the brilliant summer sunlight in the greater Seattle area, I have sometimes muttered that I look forward to the cool and gray of november. But yeah, when it’s raining and dark at 4:30pm, I usually regret saying that. Overall, though, I absolutely love the Puget Sound area and would never live anywhere else again, and certainly never again in Colorado, where I grew up.

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