This year's once-a-decade official U.S. national population count will start in a small Alaska Native village perched on the tundra overlooking the Bering Sea. Daytime temperatures will be well below freezing.
The 2020 U.S. census is due to launch Tuesday in Toksook Bay, a Yup'ik hamlet about 500 miles (800 kilometers) west of Anchorage, the state's largest city. Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham himself is scheduled to conduct the first in-home interview, with an elder chosen by the local tribe.
The Census Bureau has a long tradition of kicking off the count in rural Alaska months before it gets underway in the Lower 48 states. There are good reasons for that tradition, Dillingham told a news conference in Anchorage on Friday.
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