The GirlAlive Blog

Practically Canadian

June 11, 2009 on 12:01 pm | In Life In General, Scotland | 5 Comments

If you remember your middle school astronomy lessons, the earth is tilted on its axis, so that in late June, the north pole points toward the sun all day and in December, the south pole points toward the sun all the time, leaving the north pole in the dark. This is why the length of daylight changes depending on the time of year and the latitude that you live. The closer you are to the poles, the more drastic the difference between summer and winter daylight hours.

I bring this up because I live in Scotland. It’s pretty much next door to the north pole. To be more specific, I live at approximately 55 degrees north latitude. (90 degrees is the north pole and 0 is the equator.) Right now, the sun rises at around 4:00 in the morning and sets sometime around 11:00 at night. (Internet says 4:32am and 10:01pm, but I went to bed at 11:00 and there was still light streaming through the window, and I woke up just before 4:00 and there was light streaming through the window.) The winter is quite the opposite. For all of December and January, I never saw daylight except for a few hours through my office window in the middle of the day.

I’m not from tropical regions. I’m from Minnesota. If you are British you think that the northern parts of the US are about the same latitude as Britain. (I have not yet met a British person who didn’t think that — including my own husband.) You are wrong. Minneapolis is about 45 degrees north latitude. That’s 10 degrees further south than Glasgow, which equates to almost 700 miles. The only major cities in the US that are even close to the same latitude as Scotland are in Alaska. The entire United Kingdom is further north than the northernmost point in the non-Alaskan US. I checked. The northernmost point in the “lower 48″ is the northwest angle, the little nipple sticking out the top of Minnesota. It is at 49 degrees, 23 minutes North latitude. The southernmost point of the UK is the south end of the Scilly Isles, which is at 49 degrees, 51 minutes North latitude. If you shifted the UK directly to the west and positioned it over North America, it would be entirely in Canada. Glasgow would be near the shores of Hudson Bay.

On the 4th of July, Americans can watch fireworks in relative dark at 10:00 at night. In Scotland on the 4th of July, it doesn’t really get dark enough for a proper fireworks display at all. Where I grew up, it was usually at least very dim, if not fully dark at bedtime all year. I never needed blackout curtains or anything because I slept at night. Here, there is no night for two months a year. I checked, and Minnesota has at least 2 hours a day more nighttime right now than Scotland does. It’s not right.

I can get used to most of the weather here. Cold? No problem. Rain? It’s just water. Wind? Okay, so the constant wind does annoy me. But the difference in daylight hours between here and the US is the one thing I just can’t seem to get used to. I can’t get to sleep when it’s still light out. I can’t get back to sleep when I wake up with the sun streaming in at 4:00 in the morning. Yes, I already have one of those stupid sleep masks. It’s uncomfortable and makes my face sweaty. I don’t want to wear a stupid mask. I want it to be dark outside.