Cii Radio| Ayesha Ismail| 17 January 2018| 29 Rabi ul Aakhir 1439
The Siberian outpost of Oymyakon is officially the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth – yet residents incredibly go about their day-to-day routines despite bone-chilling temperatures of -62C (-80F).
In fact, it’s quite possible that it’s even colder than -62C, it’s given that temperature in the world’s coldest village reached near-record lows, so much so that their digital thermometer broke as a result.
Oymyakon is a village in the Russian region of Yakutia and has a population of about 500 people. It’s named after the Oymyakon River, which literally translates to mean: “unfrozen patch of water; place where fish spend the winter.”
It’s a place where 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. 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.
While it might provide an interesting photo op for tourists, natives of Russia’s Yakutia Republic take it in their stride.
The biting temperature is not an excuse to stay indoors, even for the youngest residents of the coldest place on Earth.
Local schoolchildren were finally allowed to skip classes after temperatures in the village dropped below -53C – the threshold after which schools must close. Yet when temperatures fell to -50C in November, the kids attended classes as normal. That qualifies as a no-excuses environment.
In 1933, when temperatures dipped to -68C, the town earned a place in the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ as the coldest permanently-inhabited place on Earth. Only Antarctica gets colder.
The freezing conditions of Antarctica reached a new low in 2013 when NASA announced a record temperature of -94.7C based on analysed satellite data.
