Gray day

It is 10:05 a.m. and according to the National Weather Service, the sun should be making its glorious appearance in the morning sky. But alas, I do not see the sun. It's cloudy out today and very dark and depressing. The cloud cover is currently halfway down the mountains. Anchorage will have a whopping 5 hours, 42 minutes of daylight today.

The good news is that on December 21st -- winter solstice -- we'll start gaining daylight again! Right now we are losing around 2-3 minutes per day, at other times during the year it's closer to 5 or 6 minutes. So in a month we could possibly lose (or gain) 2 hours of daylight.

People wonder why Alaskans play golf or bike and hike at midnight, or otherwise stay up so late in the summertime -- well, we're trying to soak up as much sun as possible! It's a neat experience to go camping and stay up all night, but only use a headlamp or flashlight for about 2 of those hours.