Alaskan Summer Party
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Hi. I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook. The folks up in Fairbanks, Alaska are enjoying almost 22 hours of daylight this week. Some say it's a reward for the 22 hours of darkness they experience in December. But Weather Notebook correspondent Amy Mayer says the midnight sun is an excuse for a party.

Amy: "In Fairbanks we celebrate the solstices and the equinoxes. But the summer solstice is the biggest shindig. Food, music, and carnival rides attract thousands of people downtown. Guy Douglas helps run the Midnight Sun Festival. He says the celebration is a sort of announcement."

Guy: "We've endured through the long dark nights, and we've endured through the mud of break-up, and this is really the first big outdoor event where Fairbanksans can get out and say, ์there's a reason we live up here."

Amy: "There's also midnight baseball with no artificial lights and the annual 10-kilometer Midnight Sun Run. New this year is a round-the-clock reading of the entire New Testament. Neal Matson calls his brainchild the Messiah's Marathon."

Neal: "We want to show that the Bible is a universal book and we can all appreciate it together and let's do it outside and have some fun in the midnight sun."

Amy: "Writer Sherry Simpson's always out to enjoy the solstice. But she says all the revelry can't hide one simple fact."

Sherry: "It's a bittersweet feeling because you've been working up to this light all year and then you realize this was it, it was the peak and I try really hard not to think of it as the downhill slide but in your heart of hearts on summer solstice you're thinking about the other solstice at the same time and so it's kind of a melancholy feeling.

Thanks today to correspondent Amy Mayer of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington observatory and is supported by the National Science foundation. Check out more on the weather at www.weathernotebook.org.