The darkest days of the year.

I just thought I would let everyone see what the dark is like in Alaska. I realized this morning that we are less than a week away from the Winter Solstice (the darkest day of the year). I never really paid attention to the solstices until we moved to Alaska. Forget New Year's Eve, we have a great big celebration on Dec. 21st. Everybody hangs out downtown and there are fireworks. Here in Alaska it is a big deal to celebrate the date that marks the beginning of more daylight. After the 21st of December we gain 6-7 minutes of daylight every day. It's not real noticeable for the first few weeks, but after that you really start noticing when you have an hour or more of daylight than you had before.

I decided this year that I have been in Alaska long enough to be a true resident. The dark actually snuck up on me this year. A couple weeks ago I realized it was 10:00 am and it still wasn't fully light. But I also realized that it was the beginning of December and there was only about 20 days to go till the solstice. By the end of this month we will have almost 20 hours of dark/semi-dark. The upside of it all is that by the summer solstice-June 21-we will have 20 hours of light/dusk. Actually, it never gets totally pitch black dark at that time of year.

These are a few pictures I took this morning. The first two were taken at 8:30 am and the last two were taken at 9:30 am.