The first sunrise in 65 days at America’s most northerly community of Utqiagvik will happen Jan. 22 at 1:15 p.m., local time.
That’s when the polar night comes to the official end in the town still known by many as Barrow, which will have approximately 48 minutes of actual daylight after the sun rises at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday.
Utqiagvik home to about 5,000 people along the Arctic Ocean, at Latitude 71.17. It’s 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle and is the commercial and government center for the North Slope Borough.
Last week, a fiber optic cable was broken that brings cellular service to the North Slope and Northwest Arctic communities.
People in Barrow are reporting that their ASTAC and AT&T cell phones services have been disrupted, but landlines still work.
“Partial cellular services are coming back online in Utqiaġvik, but our teams are still working to get all affected members and services back online. We hope to continually make updates till all are restored. We will be automatically applying credits for all affected members for services during the outage. Quyanaqpuk for your patience and please stay tuned for further updates,” said a notice to customers from ASTAC.
Also possibly to the break in the Quintillion fiber optic cable along the seabed in the Beaufort Sea, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration camera is not working, and the Sea Ice Radar is off line.
The NOAA camera is at the Barrow NOAA Observatory building, and looks down from the meteorology tower located to the east of the building.
The Sea Ice Group at the Geophysical Institute at UAF monitors the sea ice as it ebbs and flows along the coastline. The last image transmitted to the website was at about 4:56 p.m. on Jan. 18.
