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DAWN OR DECEPTION? Longyearbyen’s first sunrise of the year after nearly four months? Well, kinda…it’s complicated

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The nearly four-month-long polar night is over as the sun made a dazzling return with its rays to Longyearbyen on Saturday. Except in all but the technical sense it actually didn’t and won’t for a few more weeks.

Confused? No biggie – it happens all the time, with even the sun forgetting its norms and doing things like setting twice a day in these parts.

firstsunrise
The “official” first sunrise of 2019 in Longyearbyen on Saturday as seen from the center of town was obscured by mountains and clouds. Photo by Mark Sabbatini / Icepeople.

There’s a reason the world’s northernmost town celebrates the return of the sun during the first week (plus an additional day) in March rather than the official first sunrise date of Feb. 16. The surrounding mountains let the town linger in shadow as sunlight tantalizingly creeps its way down the mountain across the channel during the next two weeks.

But that doesn’t keep locals from posting early celebratory photos online from town, nearby expeditions in open areas near town where the sun can actually be seen and settlements further south in Svalbard which are getting an early end to the long night (darkness isn’t the right word since the archipelago has had weeks of usable daytime twilight, not to mention a spectacular winter of Northern Lights).

outsidetown
For those in Longyearbyen wanting to see the sun the day it officially rose for the first time, making to effort to take a trip outside town in temperatures below 20C (sometimes well below) was necessary. Photo by Kanerva Karpo.

“After a 56-hour work week, driving over the glacier to Mohnbukta, we saw a glimpse of sun for the first time in 113 days,” wrote Kanerva Karpo, a graphic designer spending her second winter in Longyearbyen, wrote in a Facebook post after an excursion this weekend. “The guide told me he was moved to tears, but in temperatures of -40°C with wind and velocity chill, his tears turned into ice cubes. That’s February for you.”

Actually, as with perception/reality of the sun appearing over Longyearbyen, the cold officially wasn’t quite that bad – although factor in strong winds with gusts topping 40 kilometers an hour in some areas and unofficially that’s easily how it felt. The sun’s rays weren’t making much of an effort to warm things up on its debut weekend, with temperatures in the bay Karpo’s group visited officially hovering around minus 25 Celsius, and other areas in and near Longyearbyen roughly the same (some thermometers in cars, at private cabins and other locales registered temperatures hovering around -30C).

Speaking of cold, hard stats, Longyearbyen’s first sunrise of 2019 on Saturday occurred at 11:22 a.m. and the first sunset was at 1:02 p.m. And while the rest of the world is used to seeing days/nights shorten/lengthen a few minutes a day, here the sun will rapidly make up for lost light as total official sunlight on Sunday was 2 hours, 31 minutes, followed the rest of the week by 3:10, 3:42, 4:11, 4:37, 5:02 and 5:24.

moonrise
The sun and a nearly full moon touch the horizon of the mountains across the channel from Longyearbyen early this week. Photo by Elin Amundsen.

But there was about eight hours of usable daylight (a.k.a. civil twilight) and roughly 12 hours of perceivable twilight on Saturday, which was supplemented by a nearly full moon that resulted in a multitude of enlightening shots of the twin presence of the two orbs.

Some legitimate “first sunrise” photos from Svalbard did find their way into media reports this week, albeit a bit to the south at the Polish Polar Station at Hornsund where the first official appearance of the sun was Feb. 12. But as with Longyearbyen, the staff members at the station had to wait a couple of days until the sun decided to offer its light and warmth for Valentine’s Day.

hornsundsunrise
The sun peaks above the mountains on Feb. 18 at the Polish Polar Station, six days after the official end of the polar winter there. Photo by Piotr Zagórski/Polish Polar Station.

“The first day lasted an hour and six minutes and we were hoping that for the first time since October 27th we will see the sun,” Tomasz Kopeć, a scientist at the station, wrote on its official Facebook page. “Instead of the sun, we had a beautiful winter at noon – full of cloudy weather, wind and snow falling.”

The sun will be visible (skies willing) for the first time in the main part of Longyearbyen on March 8, when several hundred residents and visitors gather at a memorial near Svalbard Church for the highlight event of Solfestuka, the town’s most popular annual event.

Afterwards the days will continue to lengthen rapidly until the start of the polar summer on April 19, which will be preceded the day before by the oddity of a sunset (12:01 a.m.) occurring before sunrise (1:49 a.m.). That oddity will repeat itself when the polar summer ends Aug. 25 with a sunset at 12:52 a.m. and a sunrise at 1:09 a.m. And just to add a bit of extra weirdness there will be two sunsets on Aug. 26 at 12:03 a.m. and 11:40 p.m., with sunrise at 1:57 a.m. The next polar night begins Oct. 27 (with a normal sunrise followed by sunset beforehand).

 

 

 

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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