Chelsea, AL: how dark is the sky here?

Satellite radiance puts Chelsea in the dark sky band. Among the darkest skies of any US city in this dataset. The Milky Way should be visible overhead on clear, moonless nights. Only 1.2% of the 3,206 cities measured here read darker than Chelsea.

This comes from a satellite measuring light radiating upward, not a person's eyes on the ground, so it isn't the same as a Bortle class, though the two track each other closely.

Chelsea is already about as dark as this dataset gets

Nothing in this dataset's 3,206 US cities measures a darker sky than Chelsea. That doesn't mean nowhere is darker, unincorporated land and wilderness aren't part of this dataset at all, only incorporated cities of 10,000 people or more.

How Chelsea compares nationally

Chelsea, AL has a population of about 17,293, one of 3,206 US cities of 10,000 or more residents in this dataset. Chelsea places 39 of 3,206 cities in this dataset's darkest-to-brightest order.