Could you live in a place like Barrow, Alaska? +BQs?
Question by Leah <3s Ari: Could you live in a place like Barrow, Alaska? +BQs?
Just a few fun facts about Barrow:
-Barrow’s climate is cold and dry and is classified as a polar climate. Winter weather can be extremely dangerous because of the combination of cold and wind, while summers are cool even at their warmest.
-Temperatures remain below freezing from early October through late May. The high daily temperature is above freezing on an average of only 109 days per year. There are freezing temperatures on an average of 324 days per year.
-On November 18 or 19 the sun goes down, and remains below the horizon for about 65 days until it re-appears, normally on January 22 or January 23.
-In addition to the low temperatures and months without sun, Barrow is also one of the cloudiest places on earth. Owing to the prevailing easterly winds off the Arctic Ocean, Barrow is completely overcast slightly more than 50% of the year and at least 70% overcast 62% of the time.
(I certainly could not live there. It’s not even officially winter yet and I HATE it. The worst part of all of it is the dryness…my skin and hair, bleh.)
BQ1: What are the winters like where you live? Do you actually experience seasons or is it mostly cool or mostly warm most of the year?
We definitely experience seasons here…gets to temperatures in the teens (farenheit) in the winter and the hundreds in the summer.
BQ2: Have you ever had a white Christmas/holiday season?
We did last year…epic winter storm, feet and feet of snow. We couldn’t even leave our apartment. The ground was covered in snow for at least a month.
Rolly, you think it would be cool? LOL I would hate it…it gets dark here at 5:00 p.m. in the winter, so depressing.
Best answer:
Answer by Zorro
I could not live in Alaska I would be too afraid Sarah Palin would show up at my door for dinner or something. Forget that.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Yeah, I’m with Zorro…I couldn’t live in the same state as that twit. I do think having a few months of dark skies would be pretty cool though.
Oh, I love the dark! That’s why I like being up in the middle of the night / early morning…it’s comforting or something to be in the dark…lol, I don’t know, but I love it. Sun is overrated.
I could, but I wouldn’t want to. As it is we deal with freezing temperatures from Oct-May. But I really don’t think i could handle so much darkness. I have the hardest time with getting dark at 5pm let alone no sun at all!
BQ: Cold, and super windy. We have seasons but fall and spring are very short. Spring is about 2 weeks in May, then summer June, July and August and then it goes downhill quickly from there.
BQ: Yep, many many times.
I’ve always wanted to live in Alaska for 18 months – from about May until about the following September. We went to Alaska for our honeymoon and it was incredible!
Winters here – there are lots of pleasant days for snow tubing/skiing.
We have white christmases often – about 40%? I would estimate.
I was born and raised in Anchorage, AK. I LOVE it there. Now I live in Texas due to hubby’s job. I hate it here. Its so freaking hot and there are no seasons at all. You have hot as hell and hot. All of our family lives there still and we hope to go back one day. Barrow probably sucks to live but Anchorage is nice.
We almost moved to Alaska… not quite as bad as Barrows, but still… it’s Alaska. At first I hated the idea but as I got used to it, it kinda grew on me. We were going to be there for one year, and I thought it would be a different experience that might be kinda cool… we didn’t end up going, and I was a little bit disappointed… although I was a lot more relieved.
BQ1: I’m in Colorado, so yeah, we get snow, but not too bad. We’ve only gotten one good snow so far this year, but it all melted off by the next day. I grew up in Southern California. The coldest it ever got was about 40 degrees, and that felt FREEZING. I loved it there… then I went to Idaho for school, way way way too much snow, what was I thinking?! Colorado isn’t too bad, especially compared to Idaho… and Alaska
BQ2: My last few Chrismtases have all been white. I’ve been in Colorado, Utah, or Idaho for the past several years, but before I went to College I never ever had a white Christmas. We’ve never really been snowed in, but one year when I was in college I had to trudge through three feet of snow to get to class a week before Christmas… that was fun (not)
Main question: No. I think I would shrivel up without sunlight.
BQ1: Defined seasons. I live in New York.
BQ2: It’s depressing if we don’t! Where I live we’ve only got about 4 inches so far, but where I work 30 mins away we have 4 feet of snow- you can already go sledding down the snow banks!!!
I could live anywhere. Alaska would be amazing, as long as Palin kept her distance..
BQ1: They are breezey and moderate weather (FL).
BQ2: No, never.
We moved to Alaska and lived there for about 2 years when I was in elementry school and honestly,I hated it.The weather was horrible.
BQ1:We live in North Carolina and the winters are very mild.We experience seasons but they are mild but believe me it can get VERY cold coming from someone who has lived in the Midwest for most of their life.
BQ2:Yes,early this year in Feburary I believe had a lot of snow(for NC that is) it was enough to go out playing in and sleding in though!
I live in Edmonton. Close enough.
BQ: Snow for a month you say. I wish I had your problems.
Oh my god no. Where I’m from in Australia, we experience definite seasons and the coldest I think I have ever experienced is 5 degrees Celsius, which according to my unit converter is 41 degrees Fahrenheit. I have never seen snow although it does snow in parts of the country… the freakiest weather phenomenon I’ve ever seen is hail… how boring!! But our summers are HOT (40C/104F), our winters cold and dreary, and our springs beautiful with perfect temps and gorgeous blooms.
We used to live in the tropical far north, and it was hot hot hot there 24/7, 365 days a year. Average daytime temps are 33 degrees Celsius (91F) with 100% humidity. Up there they don’t experience the same seasons as the rest of the country – there are 2 distinct seasons – the Wet Season and the Dry Season. The wet typically lasts from October-Feb and is characterized by monsoonal downpours and the occasional tropical cyclone. The dry season is all other times of the year. I believe the lowest overnight temp they have ever recorded there is 19C (66F)
I lived there for 6 years, and have had a hard time re-acclimatising to my old home town. I complain about the weather on average once a day and had to spend a fortune clothing my family as after years up north, we barely owned a pair of socks or long sleeved shirt between us. I literally _crave_ sunshine and start to feel a bit down when it is dark and miserable and raining for days on end.
So no, no way, not in this lifetime, not ever, could I live in a polar climate!!
No, never experienced a white Christmas!!! – due to Southern Hemisphere experiencing summer! Xmas Days for us are usually hot/warm, sunny… perfect outdoor drinking and eating weather. There have been a couple of off years where it has been a bit chilly or raining on Christmas Day, but on the whole, every Christmas memory I have usually involves backyard cricket, seafood platters and relaxing in a deckchair drinking cocktails.
I would try it out first and then say f- it I’m out on here. Its good to try some things once.
BQ: LOL winter!?? Hahaha, what’s that? California is just gets chilly even though its cold to the people that live here. You should see the clothes that people wear, it looks like they should be living in Barrow Alaska. Its warm/slightly chilly. Our weather has been 69 day and 45 night.
BQ2: No
this is why I want to move to a state that actually has seasons.
Eeek! Definitely not. lol. I hate cold weather. I can’t imagine living somewhere where the temperature regularly gets below zero. Plus, Barrow is a pretty small town (only about 4,000 people), and I wouldn’t want to live in too remote of an area. And wow, I didn’t know there was a period of time where the sun was ALWAYS down. That would be so depressing and I couldn’t handle that. lol I would not like it being cloudy all the time either.
BQ1: Winters here are pretty weird. On average, temperatures are about 45-50 degrees during the day and in the 30s at night. But we always have days where it gets really cold (in the 30s during the day and 20s or even teens at night), and also days where it gets way warmer than average. And the unusually cold days and unusually warm days often happen pretty close together too. One week it will be freezing almost every day, and then suddenly the next week, it starts getting to 70 degrees every day. lol
BQ2: Nope, never had a white Christmas. It hardly ever snows here anyway. When it does, it’s usually not quite cold enough to stick, and we only get flurries most of the time anyway. I used to live in Virginia where it snowed a lot more, and there were a few years where we got lots of snow during the holiday season. But I don’t recall it ever actually snowing on Christmas.
The temperature doesn’t bother me as much as living in the middle of nowhere does. I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere before, but Barrow Alaska strikes me as the definition of the middle of nowhere. I’d pass.
BQ: We get tons of rain in the fall and winter. Very rarely do we actually get snow. We typically hang around 50F. This year is the first year since 1955 that we have had such cold temperatures. Climatologists figure we are due for a La Niña effect. Which will mean more rain, snow and colder than normal temperatures.
BQ2: I’ve only had one white Christmas while living in this part of the country. Prior to living where I am all we ever had was a white Christmas.
No, I wouldn’t. I went to Alaska in 2008 for a trip with my husband and although it’s a nice place to vacation in, I wouldn’t live there. It is really cold during winter and the daylight hours were really short. So I can’t imagine living in a place where it’s dark all the time for 30 days.
I live in Texas and I’m used to sunny, hot days… Beach days, etc.
We are in England the winters here are freezing and rainy. I find its cold until october – April and July & Aug it’s either hot or lashing it down! The weather here is very unpredictable and the met office is always wrong lol.
I probably could but I wouldn’t want to.
BQ1: where I live currently winters are cold and damp but not overly cold. It snows then melts then snows then melts. When we were in Edmonton (last winter and the one before that) its very cold and dry. Not unusual to see -20 to -50 there. It snows but not a whole ton. Its just that it doesn’t melt between snowfalls so it looks like we have tons of snow. I moved back to Ontario from Edmonton on May 31st of this year. It was 30 degrees C in Ontario and humid as heck. Edmonton was cold and snowing that same day.
BQ2: many and I wouldn’t want it any other way