The Washington Post :
In this remote outpost in Siberia, the cold is no small affair.
Eyelashes freeze, frostbite is a constant danger and cars are usually kept running even when not being used, lest their batteries die in temperatures that average minus-58 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, according to news reports.
This is Oymyakon, a settlement of some 500 people in Russia’s Yakutia region, that has earned the reputation as the coldest permanently occupied human settlement in the world. It is not a reputation that has been won easily. Earlier this week, a cold snap sent temperatures plunging toward record lows.
The town’s official measurement recorded the temperature at minus-74 Fahrenheit this week, though a new digital thermometer installed in town for all to see, part of the town’s reputation for frigid temperatures, broke as it registered minus-80 degrees on Sunday. According to the Siberian Times, some residents’ own measurements had shown the temperature below minus-88 degrees, approaching a former record from the 1930s. The village recorded an all-time low of minus-98 degrees Fahrenheit in 2013. Though schools in the area remain open as temperatures dip into the minus-40s, they were closed on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
Dark 21 hours a day in the winter, the town has been an object of international curiosity as its reputation for fearsome cold and the resilient residents who withstand it year after year, has grown.
Amos Chapple, a photojournalist from New Zealand, traveled to the region in 2015 to capture the subzero way of life. The village is remote, located closer to the Arctic Circle than to the nearest major city, some 500 miles away, and Chapple described an arduous trip to get there to The Washington Post. After a seven-hour flight from Moscow, some 3,300 miles away, he took a van to a nearby gas station and then hitched a ride to the village after two days waiting in a shack and living off reindeer soup.
In this remote outpost in Siberia, the cold is no small affair.
Eyelashes freeze, frostbite is a constant danger and cars are usually kept running even when not being used, lest their batteries die in temperatures that average minus-58 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, according to news reports.
This is Oymyakon, a settlement of some 500 people in Russia’s Yakutia region, that has earned the reputation as the coldest permanently occupied human settlement in the world. It is not a reputation that has been won easily. Earlier this week, a cold snap sent temperatures plunging toward record lows.
The town’s official measurement recorded the temperature at minus-74 Fahrenheit this week, though a new digital thermometer installed in town for all to see, part of the town’s reputation for frigid temperatures, broke as it registered minus-80 degrees on Sunday. According to the Siberian Times, some residents’ own measurements had shown the temperature below minus-88 degrees, approaching a former record from the 1930s. The village recorded an all-time low of minus-98 degrees Fahrenheit in 2013. Though schools in the area remain open as temperatures dip into the minus-40s, they were closed on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
Dark 21 hours a day in the winter, the town has been an object of international curiosity as its reputation for fearsome cold and the resilient residents who withstand it year after year, has grown.
Amos Chapple, a photojournalist from New Zealand, traveled to the region in 2015 to capture the subzero way of life. The village is remote, located closer to the Arctic Circle than to the nearest major city, some 500 miles away, and Chapple described an arduous trip to get there to The Washington Post. After a seven-hour flight from Moscow, some 3,300 miles away, he took a van to a nearby gas station and then hitched a ride to the village after two days waiting in a shack and living off reindeer soup.
