Complaining that you are cold? Say thank you that you do not live in the village of Oymyakon! In January, the temperature here can stay firmly at minus 50 ° C for weeks, so it is not surprising that this settlement is rightfully called the coldest in the world. The lowest temperature in the history of Oymyakon was ... -71.2ºС !!!

(20 photos total)

1. About 500 people live in the village. In the 20s and 30s it was a stopover for reindeer herders.

2. However, the Soviet government is trying to "settle down" the nomads, since considered them uncontrollable, made this settlement permanent.

3. Here, who is not so cold in such frosts!

4. Ironically, the word Oymyakon means "non-freezing water" - in honor of the nearby hot spring.

5. This monument marks the lowest record temperature in the history of the village.

9. 52-year-old Alexander Platonov - a retired teacher - went to the toilet, which is located behind his house. Many travel companies offer to visit the village and try to live in such conditions.

10. By the way, the only local school closes only at temperatures below -52 ° C.

11. Oymyakon lies about two days' drive from the city of Yakutsk, the capital of the region.

12. It is served by two airports, the capital has a university, schools, theaters and museums. In the photo: the road to Oymyakon, which was nicknamed "The Road of Bones".

13. Toilet at a gas station on the way to Oymyakon.

14. And this is a student of Yakutsk at a bus stop in the capital.

15. Common problems that Oymyakon residents face every day: ink in pens freezes, batteries lose power, and many locals leave their cars running all day. afraid they just might not turn them on again.

16. Another problem: the funeral. In this cold, it can take up to three days to dig a grave in the frozen ground. In this case, the ground must first be warmed up with a fire and put hot coals around the edges.

17. And here is the gas station on the way to Oymyakon.

Incredible facts

Welcome to Oymyakon, the coldest village on Earth, where the average temperature in January is -50 C, and the eyelashes of local residents freeze as soon as they go outside.

Oymyakon is best known as one of the "Poles of Cold" on Earth.

If we take into account some parameters, then we can say that the Oymyakon valley is the most severe settlement on Earth.


Temperature in Oymyakon

Winter 2017-2018 turned out to be so severe that the new electronic thermometer broke down as soon as it registered - 62 degrees Celsius.


The official weather station at the cold pole recorded -59 degrees, but locals say that according to their thermometers, the temperature dropped to -67 C, which is 1 degree higher than the permissible temperature for a place with a permanent population.

A digital thermometer in Oymyakon was installed in 2017 to help attract tourists, but due to record low temperatures, it failed.

Oymyakon on the map

1. Today about 500 people live in the village. In the 1920s and 1930s, reindeer herders stayed here so that their herd could drink water from the thermal spring. This is where the name of the village originated, which translates as "water that does not freeze".


2. In 1933, a temperature of -67.7 C was recorded, which is still the lowest temperature in the northern hemisphere. The temperature dropped below only in Antarctica, but there is no permanent population there.


3. Daily problems faced by locals include the following: freezing paste in the pen, freezing glasses, which then stick to the face, and quickly draining batteries and accumulators.


4. They say that the locals do not even jam their cars, as they will be impossible to bring. Truckers even work for several months without turning off the engine. However, sometimes even this does not help, because after a 4-hour parking, the car simply freezes, and its wheels become stone.


5. The average life expectancy in this village is 55 years, and most of all residents are afraid of funerals. The fact is that the deceased is very difficult to bury due to the fact that the earth is as hard as stone. To soften it, first a fire is kindled, after which the hot coals are pushed aside and a small hole is dug. This process is repeated for several days until a hole is deep enough for the coffin.


6. To get to Oymyakon from Moscow, you need to fly to Yakutsk for 6 hours, then drive another 1,000 km along a snow-covered track. But in the summer, you can try to fly to the village by plane, but you will have to land at your own peril and risk, since the airport is old, there is an abandoned kindergarten nearby, and all this is surrounded by a large unplowed field on which the planes land.

Oymyakon - the pole of cold


7. Children are wrapped up here so that they are unable to move independently. Here's one example:

* First, they put on warm underwear, and woolen pants on top, after which they pull on cotton, thicker pants.

* Knitted socks and felt boots must be worn on your feet.

* After this, the child is wrapped in a tsigey fur coat, one hat is first put on the head, and another tsigay hat on top.

* Hare mittens are put on the child's hands, and his face is tied very tightly with a scarf so that only eyebrows and eyes remain in sight.

* A fur coat is put on the stove, which is then laid on a sled, the child is carried in his arms, put on a sled and taken to kindergarten.

8. It is very dreary here in winter, since the day lasts only 4 hours, while people still stay in their homes and warm themselves by the stove.


9. You can go to school until the temperature drops to -60 degrees. At the same time, schoolchildren sit in a coat, and together they warm the pens with their breath so that they can write with them.


10. All the clothes of local residents are made of natural fur, since everything artificial simply breaks in the cold. High boots are worn on the feet, which are made from the skin of the lower part of a deer's leg. It is better for the fur coat to reach the shoes, since if it is shorter, you can seriously freeze your shins and knees. Only a mink, arctic fox or fox hat is worn on the head.


Oymyakon, Russia

11. The most favorite holiday of all local residents is the holiday of the North. Especially on this day, three very important and long-awaited guests come to Oymyakon at once - Santa Claus from Veliky Ustyug, Santa Claus straight from Lapland, as well as Yakut Santa Claus Chishan, who is considered the guardian of the cold.


12. All foreigners are shocked by what they see. Many do not know what felt boots are, and in order to help them, locals hang up signs "right" and "left" on each felt boot.


13. Women here, like all women in the world, want to look good. Therefore, even at a temperature of -60 C, some wear stockings, go on high heels and in a short skirt. In this case, of course, a very long fur coat is put on top.


14. Residents do not need refrigerators, as locals simply keep frozen fish, oil, meat and berries on the veranda of their house.


15. All villagers know about the rules of living at very low temperatures. One of them says that a person is able to withstand low temperatures if he is not afraid of them, or rather, he is not afraid to freeze. According to scientists, a fear of freezing with panic forces the freezing process, and if a person has given himself a clear statement "I'm not cold!", Then such a psychological technique significantly increases the survival time in the cold.

Hello! My name is Nikolay, I am 38 years old and I want to tell you my story. It just so happened that my mother gave birth to me at the pole of cold. Probably, dear readers, you are knowledgeable enough to know that the cold pole does not coincide with either the North Pole or the South Pole, but is located in Yakutia, in the village of Oymyakon. In fact, the residents of neighboring Verkhoyansk argue fiercely that they are colder, but it has been documented that it is colder in Oymyakon, even if this is not the case, they still believe.

My parents, being naive students, came here in the late 60s from Novosibirsk, after graduation from the institute. I don't know what drove them, this topic was never raised in the family, but it just so happened that my sister and I were born here. After school, Svetlana left to study in Vladivostok, got married there and stayed by the warm Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan for the rest of her life (for us Vladivostok is a very warm city). I learned to be an electrician in Yakutsk and returned to my native village. There are about a thousand kilometers from Yakutsk to Oymyakon. There is no bus service all year round. In the summer you can still get there by public transport, but in the winter you have to take a UAZ "loaf" and ride it across the snowy desert. The road takes an average of thirty hours, so only a wealthy person can afford to leave or come to Oymyakon in winter. It is not winter here only from the second half of May to the first half of September. The rest of the time is dog cold.

It's funny to read the news or watch TV stories about how Moscow froze over at twenty degrees below zero; our children stop going to school only when the thermometer drops below sixty degrees. Twenty degrees with a minus sign is a fabulous warmth, minus thirty is a slight coolness. In January in Oymyakon the average temperature is 55 degrees below zero, in February it is even colder, under sixty. People endure such weather gifts. Even in summer periodically there is a negative temperature, there is no need to talk about any sunburn in such a climate, you just need to survive.

My parents worked at a weather station. In theory, they could have retired after fifteen years of labor, but they worked for twenty-two years - and then left for the mainland, where they were seriously ill for several years. In Oymyakon, due to the high ambient temperature, there are no viruses at all, they simply die here. On the mainland, any cold, any flu, can be fatal for a northerner. Now, following my Parents to the south, to Novosibirsk, I left. So far I've been living here for only a year, but first things first. Let's start with what kind of village Oymyakon is.

Oymyakon village

Who needs Oymyakon is not clear. The authorities have long ceased to pay attention to the problems of the poor northerners. Before moving to Novosibirsk, I worked as an electrician at the Airport. Electrician - loudly said. At the pole of cold, it looks like an old barn-like building with broken glass, torn doors and furniture collected from neighbors who have abandoned their homes. Nobody finances the airport, so all its personnel - the dispatcher, the inspector of the runway, the electrician - survive as best they can. We were paid a salary, but they did not give money for repairs and other needs at all. After I quit, the inspector began to combine his job with that of an electrician. There was nothing tricky in my work - it was just necessary to organize the illumination of the runway. In the cold, the bulbs exploded, even while under the hood. There are, of course, special lamps that are not afraid of frost, but no one gave us money for them. You can, of course, not fly in the dark, but in winter we have only four hours of light, of which two hours are twilight. Like it or not, you need to turn on the light on the strip. If nothing changes, then soon the dispatcher will also leave the airport, then the inspector will probably have to combine three positions.

There is a waiting room in a dilapidated log building, which we call the airport. It looks like a room with two old sofas. It is very cold in it, because the airport is old and slowly blowing from the cracks.

There is a cow pen and a kindergarten near the airport. Now it works only halfway, there are still children in Oymyakon. A little further away - a huge field that even a very drunk person cannot call even, this is our runway.

The airport was organized during the Great Patriotic War. There was an air base for the Pacific Fleet, which carried out raids on Japan. After the end of the Second World War, the airport began to be exploited for peaceful purposes, for civilians. Only two aircraft models flew here - An-2 and An-24. Flights are prohibited at temperatures of minus six degrees Celsius and below. In Soviet times, aircraft flew all year round, then, during perestroika, flights were stopped, which almost killed the village, but after a few years they resumed again. True, now there is communication with Yakutsk only in the summer. There used to be a flight to the village of Ust-Neru, but it was now closed as unnecessary. In winter, you can get to the big city only by UAZ.

In our frosts, the car is not muffled. For truckers in Yakutia, the motors run for months without shutting down. For two hours of inactivity, everything will freeze so much - that then you will have to wait for summer to start. On the mainland, cars are warmed up in warm boxes, in car washes. We have nothing like that in Oymyakon. And in general, in all of Yakutia, probably only in Yakutsk you can find warm boxes. If you leave the car with the engine on for four hours, it will freeze too, the wheels will turn to stones. Of course, you can drive such a car, but very carefully and slowly. Imagine riding on wheels that resemble the shape of an egg - is it convenient? And we had to ride like that every winter. You roll yourself on the sly and think: "God damn this north, I will leave for Sochi, buy a house." And then you don't go anywhere. And not because you love this Oymyakon and these frosts so much, it's just that everything starts spinning again, it starts spinning and there is no time for that. You have to survive here.

It is not uncommon for wheels to burst in winter. Iron car frames regularly crack, plastic bumpers crumble into dust from frost. The most cruel thing that can happen to a motorist is if the stove in his car breaks down. Of course, everything is glued here, both the doors and the vents, but the cold still enters the car, and it itself cools down due to the outside air. If the stove is covered, put on whatever you find and how you want, pull to the nearest village. True, they are not the same here as in the central part of Russia, and two hundred and three hundred kilometers can be traveled until you find someone, but you can drive all five hundred.

People on the mainland are afraid that the dollar will rise, the ruble will fall, tariffs will rise, etc. etc. in Oymyakon, the main fear is energy problems. In conditions of such frost, you begin to treat the usual everyday joys with particular trepidation. The entire village is heated by a diesel power plant. There is no need to talk about any boiler house in such frost, there will be too great losses. Our DES, in my lifetime, has been out of order several times in the cracking cold. Moreover, in my memory, no one has ever done major repairs to the power plant. Fortunately, Yakutsk promptly responded to the breakdown and sent a team of workers. Nevertheless, the male population, at this time, tried to prevent the water supply from freezing, which would have burst later, after the power plant was repaired. Everyone who could took a blowtorch in their hands and warmed the pipes.

Each house has its own heating element, since it is fraught with the transfer of hot water in a sixty-degree frost - at best, it will simply cool down. But in order for a person to reach even a cold one, it is necessary to heat pipes with electricity. For this, special heating cables are placed on them, and a casing is placed on top. If the power plant stops working, then the pipes stop heating, and the casing is able to keep heat only for a certain time - then it becomes not enough. You have to rip off the casing and heat the pipe with a blowtorch. If the pipe breaks, it is unrealistic to replace it before summer. Can you imagine leaving a hospital, school or kindergarten without water?

Yes, there is a hospital, a school, and a shop at the cold pole. The job is not only for tough men, but also for fragile women. Even children in Oymyakon are not the same as on the big Earth. From an early age she is ready for frost and harsh Yakut weather. When it is completely cold outside the window, no heating helps. Schoolchildren sit in a coat during lessons (the coat is specially kept at school, because there is no reason to carry it back and forth with you) and warm gel pens, which, in theory, do not freeze in the cold.

The attitude towards clothes in Oymyakon is not at all the same as on the mainland. Nice and ugly - it doesn't matter. The main thing is to keep it warm. If you jump out into the street in a thin jacket for a couple of minutes, the sleeve may break off, or the collar. A real oymyan on his feet wears high boots made of kamus, the hide of the lower part of a reindeer leg. For one pair of high fur boots you need ten kamuses, that is, fur from ten deer's legs. The length of the fur coat must necessarily reach up to ounces. Otherwise, your knees and shins may freeze. On the head is a fur hat made of polar fox, mink or fox, for those who live more modestly. You can't go outside without a scarf. In severe frost, you can breathe outside only through a scarf. Thus, at least some warm air enters the lungs. At low temperatures, the oxygen content in the air is very small, so the average person's breathing becomes twice as fast. If you exhale in the cold in silence, you can hear a rustling, it freezes the exhaled air. Oymyakon frosts are not afraid of colds, but frostbite here is easier to get than a lung - you can also protect yourself from it only with a warm scarf.

The nature of women does not change either by plus twenty or minus sixty. Even in such weather in Oymyakon you can meet a woman in stockings and a short skirt, however, there will be a long, long fur coat on top, but the essence of the matter does not change. It is enough to announce the dances - and the beauties will come from all the nearest villages to show themselves and look at others. There are also women in Yakut villages.

Children of the Pole of Cold

It so happened that I have no children of my own. There was a wife, but God did not send the kids. I read somewhere that children choose their own parents, apparently none of them wanted to live at the cold pole. Reasonable guys, needless to say. No matter how hard it is for adults in Oymyakon, children are doubly difficult. When I was still quite a baby, before being taken out into the street, they would dress me for half an hour, and all this was very reminiscent of a mysterious ritual. First, they put on warm underwear, then woolen pants, and on top - a wadded jumpsuit. On the body - a sweatshirt, on top - a warm sweater. And then another, to top off the image of cabbage - a tsigay fur coat. On my feet are ordinary socks, woolen socks and felt boots. There is a knitted hat on the head, and a tsigay hat on top. On the palm are hare mittens. It was absolutely impossible to walk in such a knightly costume. Therefore, small children are not taken down the street here, but carried in a sled. You can't just put the child on the sled - you need to warm up the bedding on the stove, lay it down first, and seat the child on top. Outside, the baby has only eyes and eyebrows, the rest of the body is not cold.

You are from the north, and what have you got there all the walruses or what?

Are you a singer or what? Now sing! Are you from the north? Can you walk without a hat in winter? When I just moved to Novosibirsk and told me that I grew up on Oymyakon, everyone was very surprised. It was believed that we could walk barefoot in the snow in a frost of fifty degrees. On the contrary, the farther north a person lives, the more carefully he treats warmth and, accordingly, dresses warmer.

Until recently, no one in Yakutia used to take walrus. Now there are not many amateurs either, but even accidents do not scare them away. For example, there is a bad tradition in Russia - to dive into the hole for baptism. It is surprising that the Orthodox Church insists, they say, this rite is not a church rite and in general it is harmful, but every year the people dive into the hole more and more. This fashion for false Orthodoxy also reached Yakutia in the middle of the 2000s. For several dozen people it cost their health, and for someone, probably, their lives. Imagine yourself, outside the window minus fifty-five degrees, the water temperature is three degrees above zero. You undress - you walk dry in the snow to the water - no problem, you dip - it's generally great, it's warm, but once you get out, your feet will instantly freeze to the ice. I myself have witnessed how the first desperate daredevils dived into the hole. Then we tore them off the ice for strength. A Russian man - he is good at a bad deed. Nobody finished experiments with winter swimming at the Pole of Cold - they began to dive, but having a bucket of hot water at hand. A man gets out of the water and a hot path is poured in front of him so that he has time to run to the car, wipe himself off and put on dry clothes. Another way is to dive in shoes, the shoes do not stick to the ice. It is strictly forbidden to dive into the hole while drunk.

In general, if you have drunk it is better not to go out. Alcohol does not save you from frost. He is more an enemy than a friend. Falling down, falling asleep is not difficult. At best, frozen limbs are amputated. Although, can such a case be called the best? There are a lot of troubles from alcohol in the north. Previously, there was a dry law in Oymyakon. Nobody introduced it, it just existed, and people followed it. The instinct of self-preservation told them that it is better not to keep even half a liter in the house away from sin. If you want to drink - drink a little and at home. Now you can read about the bottom frozen to death, then about the other. Vodka freezes in the cold, like mercury thermometers, which do not work below forty-five degrees of frost. In the village, residents use alcohol thermometers, but rather not for good, but for fun. It is clear after all that it is cold outside the window, but what difference does it make - fifty degrees or fifty-five?

In Oymyakon, the most ordinary objects and things take on very unusual forms. For example, the police here never carry batons - in the cold they harden and burst upon impact like glass. Fish, taken out of the water in frost, becomes glass in five minutes. The laundry also has to be dried very carefully. In a couple of minutes in the cold, it becomes a stake, and after two hours, things must be brought back. If you do this inaccurately, the pillowcase or duvet cover may break in half.

Of all domestic animals, only dogs, horses and, of course, reindeer can tolerate winter outdoors. Cows spend most of the year in warm bread. They can be let out into the street only when the thermometer rises above thirty degrees of frost, but even then at this temperature it is necessary to put on a special bra on the udder, otherwise the animal will freeze it. No one uses refrigerators for most of the year, storing meat, fish and lingonberries on the veranda. You cannot chop meat with an ax - otherwise it will turn into small chips, you have to saw it. Local residents suffer from vitamin deficiency en masse. They try to fight him with onions, but he gives only a small fraction of vitamins.

People at the pole of cold look much older than their age, and only a few live more than fifty-five years. Separately, it should be said about the funeral in our climate. There is even a saying here - God forbid you die in winter. They dig graves for a whole week. The earth is first heated with a stove, then the soil is hammered by twenty centimeters with crowbars, then they are heated again and again, and so on until the depth reaches two meters. The work is terrible. There are no regular diggers in Oymyakon, the digging of the grave falls entirely on the shoulders of relatives and friends.

Oymyakon now

There is still work to be done at the cold pole. It will always be here as long as there are people, but every year the population is getting smaller. Someone dies, someone leaves for the mainland. Previously, a large livestock farm and a farm where the silver fox were bred worked near Oymyakon. Her fur was the best. Probably not in vain they say that the harder the frost, the better the fur. Now both the complex and the farm have been closed. A limited number of people work at the airport, some work at the substation, and the meteorological station is still operating. People from the mainland do not come to work here, except for absolutely desperate brave men, but such over the past ten years can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Salaries by northern standards are not the highest, but when I say in Novosibirsk that I received 72 thousand rubles in Oymyakon, everyone rolls their eyes dreamily. They just don't know that chocolate there costs seven hundred rubles per bar, and all other goods are also very expensive.

Get out of the cold

After the divorce from my wife and the death of my parents, I became really depressed. Although my parents lived far away, once a year I steadily got out to them, looked at the huge Novosibirsk and envied all the people living there. None of you understand how difficult it is to drag out your existence in conditions of inhuman cold. By the age of thirty-five, my body probably had the biological age of a fifty-year-old man. There are practically no teeth left. At thirty-seven I was supposed to be fifteen years old since I worked in Oymyakon, which means that I was entitled to a pension. After retirement, I didn’t work a day. I waited for the first UAZ to go to Yakutsk, collected my dear things and drove away. He said goodbye to several people, walked around his native village for the last time and that's it.

Then there was the paperwork with an extract from Oymyakon, a flight to Novosibirsk, a passport office, justice, etc. etc. My parents left in the city a two-room apartment on Serebryannikovskaya Street, so I live almost in the center. I don’t know any problems, every new day is really new for me. I had a computer for a long time, but only in Novosibirsk I discovered the Internet. At first, I felt uncomfortable in the supermarket and in the subway, embarrassed by the crowds of people on the streets. Living in the north, you spend a huge amount of time with yourself or with your loved ones. Thus, even the most outgoing person runs the risk of becoming an introvert. I still find it difficult to strike up a conversation with a stranger. Even though I served in the army and lived in Yakutsk while I was studying at a technical school, I was still not used to the huge masses. And yet, here, on the big Earth, people are much more sociable than there in our North. Recently, I found in my classmates all my friends who left Oymyakon earlier - no one is yearning and does not want to go back.

The only thing that sometimes dreams is our warm stove. Where I, as a very little kid, slept on long winter nights. I slept on the stove, and my mother got up very early and cooked food for us in this stove. This dream is so real that right after it I wake up and for a long time cannot understand where I am, and then I go up to the window and look at large beautiful houses, sometimes I see people walking down the street and do not wrap themselves in a scarf and understand that I am in a completely different, warm world. I have heard more than once that Novosibirsk is considered a cold city. It depends on what you compare it with.

The infrastructure is great here. You can go or fly anywhere. Thousands of northerners who found themselves in harsh nature not of their own free will, but because they were born there, dream of living in Novosibirsk or a similar big and warm city, where water runs from the tap all the time, and does not freeze for months, where you can not be afraid, that the car will stall - and you will freeze to death. By the way, I recently bought myself a car - Renault Logan. I started it without starting it in winter, in a thirty-degree frost, when the neighboring cars were staked. My new friend Shurik jokes that the engine understands that I am a northerner and cannot go so wild in front of me, that's why it starts up like a clock.

Life is just beginning at forty ...

I was brought up in such a way that I always believed that after forty the sunset was already beginning. Now I look at the Siberians, at forty they are walking with young girls, they look dashing and generally do not consider themselves old. While this is new to me. When I asked a colleague at my new job: "How old do you think I am?" She immediately replied, "Fifty?" On the one hand it was funny, but on the other it was embarrassing. I'm only thirty-eight, which means you can start a new life and even have children. So far, however, not everything is smooth on this basis.

I work as a supply base electrician. Not the most romantic profession, give women bosses or narrow specialists with a large salary, but I have no position, no salary, and even health problems. When an epidemic starts in the city, I immediately start to get sick. There is no immunity to sores from the mainland, but in one winter that he lived here, he never froze anything to himself. Siberian faint frost does not leave any marks on my skin. What will happen to me, an ordinary Oymyakon man, is not known further, but I am sure that nothing bad will happen. The past is forgotten, the future is closed, the present is granted.

Instead of an afterword

I hope that someday the authorities will distract from their PR, their money and their filth and pay attention to the problems of ordinary people. There are many of us. Probably, we are not seven spans in the forehead that we cannot find a place for ourselves under the sun, but we are also people and also deserve a little, but happiness. If somewhere in a remote village of Yakutia a child starts to get sick in winter and the paramedic shrugs his shoulders, then nothing can help the baby. There are no roads, no messages, no chances. In our region, diamonds are mined, we bring a lot of money to the treasury, where do they all go? Why are there such small villages where it is impossible to live? Let Vladimir Putin save any Siberian Cranes or dive for amphoras, but come to Yakutia and see how people live there. I do not want to sound like a whiner, but with such an attitude of the authorities to the Russian north, we will soon completely lose control over this territory. There will be one big white desert. Better give Yakutia to the Japanese, enough to indulge your imperialist ambitions. I can't manage - no need, why torture people? Northerners never complain about their lives, only when I found myself here, in Novosibirsk, I realized how bad it is to live in Oymyakon.

P.S. To us in Oymyakon, in my memory, more foreigners came (Japanese, Canadians, Americans, Norwegians) than Russians. Russian moneybags who flew in on separate planes just for fun looked at the coldest place on Earth, and citizens of other states were interested in how we live in such harsh conditions. They say that they even tried to help, but due to bureaucratic delays, nothing came of it. In my opinion, it says a lot ...

Located in the east of Yakutia, not far from the Magadan region, away from the highway. The average temperature in January is -48 ° C. Even schoolchildren are not surprised by frost at 56 ° C. And the summer heat reaches + 35 ° C. The annual temperature drop is more than 100 ° C, and according to this indicator, Oymyakon ranks first in the world. There are white nights here in summer, and the duration of daylight hours in winter is only three hours! It was here in 1938 that Soviet meteorologists recorded a record temperature of - 77.8 ° C, but this is usually questioned. According to official data, the record minimum air temperature at the airport near the village of Tamtor was -64.3 ° C. With all this, the residents of Oymyakon do not think that they live in some kind of icy "hell", but find their harsh village cute and even cozy.

Harsh climate - harsh people

The village of Oymyakon is located in the Yakut ulus of the same name, the center of which is the village of Ust-Neru. Now only 462 people live in Oymyakon. The village outwardly differs little from the villages of central Russia - houses, mainly chopped huts. It turns out that the Russian log hut perfectly resists the most severe Yakut frosts. Most houses are still heated by stove heating, that is, wood. For the winter, each house, including a bathhouse and a garage, needs about 50,000 rubles for heating. Despite the remoteness, there is Wi-Fi in the village, and according to rumors, every resident, young and old, has an account in the WhatsApp messenger - this helps to contact each other in case of an emergency. However, civilization has not touched local residents in everything: even in the most severe frost, you will have to go to the toilet before the booth, which is located on the street. The toilet, as a rule, has a light, but there is no heating, and a visit to this institution for an unfamiliar person can become a "fun" attraction. But the residents of Yakutia are trying to build new houses according to all the rules of comfort. The inhabitants of the Oymyakonsky ulus live mainly by cattle breeding - they breed unprepossessing, but very hardy, shaggy Yakut horses, which are adapted to the most severe frosts and know how to dig grass from under the snow. Also residents are engaged in reindeer herding and hunting. Unlike the spoiled city kids, Oymyakon schoolchildren do not go to school only when the frost reaches -50 ° C. This is due to their safety - in such a cold, buses that carry children home can refuse. The fact is that at low temperatures the metal does not withstand, bursts, fuel consumption doubles, and at the slightest stop, the rubber of tires deforms in the cold. Of course, knowing the peculiarities of the climate, locals do not leave their cars on the street overnight, but drive them into warm garages. There are two museums in Oymyakon: a local history museum and a GULAG museum, which was opened by one of the local residents. The fact is that in Soviet times there were 29 camps around the villages, and local hunters, on orders from above, caught fugitives trying to reach the Big Land.

But why is it so cold here? After all, though Oymyakon is located beyond the Arctic Circle, there are territories much to the north of it. The same Wrangel Island, for example! However, the cold pole is located right here. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, Oymyakon is located at an altitude of 745 meters above sea level, that is, here, by definition, it should be four degrees colder than on the plain. Secondly, Oymyakon has a sharply continental climate and the annual temperature drop is more than 100 ° C, as evidenced by this. Thirdly, warmer (relatively, of course) air from the Arctic Ocean enters other regions of Yakutia and Chukotka. These air masses never reach Oymyakon, because high peaks of the famous Chersky ridge - a huge mountain range, whose peaks reach 3,003 meters (Pobeda Mountain) - stand in their way. Another mountain range reliably covers Oymyakon from the penetration of oceanic air currents from the east. And finally, fourthly, the village itself is located, as it were, in a bowl between the hills and the cooled air from the mountain peaks "flows" into it from all sides. Even in summer, temperatures can drop by 20 ° C at night. Summer heat at the cold pole is associated with the presence of hot springs gushing out of the ground.

The Pole of Cold is a place on planet Earth where the air temperature drops to record lows, i.e. it is the coldest place on the globe.

On the territory of Russia, the pole of cold is located in the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia near the village of Oymyakon. The lowest temperature officially recorded here in February 1933 is -67.7 ° С.

Oymyakon is located in a depression and is protected from all sides by mountains that hold back the release of heavy cold air. These same mountains prevent the penetration of moist air masses coming from the oceans. The average monthly temperature in January in Oymyakon is -61 ° C, but it can reach -68 ° C. According to unofficial data in the winter of 1916, the temperature in the village dropped to -82 ° C.

Oymyakon means “non-freezing spring” in the local language. There are indeed streams in this area, sections of rivers that do not freeze in such a severe frost. Oymyakon means “non-freezing water”. The nature surrounding the streams is striking in its unreality.

Since 1926, two settlements have competed for the title of "Pole of Cold" in the Northern Hemisphere - the village of Oymyakon, and more specifically the village of Tomtor, 30 kilometers to the southeast, and the city of Verkhoyansk, where the absolute minimum of the Northern Hemisphere was -67.8 ° С in January 1885. After that, a meteorological station and a local history museum "Pole of Cold" were organized here.

If geologist Sergei Obruchev had not begun to conduct research on the Indigirka River, then it is likely that Verkhoyansk would have remained the only contender for the role of the coldest city in the Northern Hemisphere. During the expedition, the scientist noticed a strange noise, which turned out to be his own breath. According to him, this noise resembled the sound of pouring grain or snow falling from tree branches. This unusual sound appears when the air temperature drops below -50 ° C, the locals nicknamed it "the whisper of the stars." Hearing this "whisper", Obruchev began to think that because of its geographical location, this area could break the records of Verkhoyansk. The Yakut village of Oymyakon is located in a depression, surrounded on all sides by mountains, its geographical position is quite interesting. In fact, Oymyakon is located higher above sea level than the rival city, but because of the surrounding mountains, it is located in a pit, because of this, cold air lingers here longer and heats up more slowly. Based on all this, Obruchev concluded that it is here that temperature records should be expected.

The length of the day in Oymyakon varies depending on the season, in summer it is almost 21 hours, and in December no more than 3. Summer in this harsh pole of cold is beautiful with its white nights, when the sun shines throughout the day. In addition to changes in the length of the day, the largest air temperature fluctuations in Eurasia per year are also observed - almost 100 degrees, that is, in winter from -67.7 ° С to + 35 ° С in summer.

The population of the village of Oymyakon according to 2010 data is 462 people, at present the number of residents has not changed significantly. Residents of Oymyakon do not wear clothes made of synthetic fabrics, because in the cold they disintegrate, in winter they even dress cows so that they do not freeze the udders. There are no colds in Oymyakon, because viruses freeze, the exhaled air freezes. There are many long-livers in this land.

Oymyakon is surprised not only by the climate, but also by the local fauna. Unusual horses are bred here, whose body is covered with thick wool 8-15 cm long. Thanks to this, the Yakut breed of horses is incredibly frost-resistant, even in winter they continue to live in the fresh air, no matter how much the temperature drops. Also, the Yakut horse finds the opportunity to look for vegetation that is under deep snow cover.

Almost nothing grows here, so people eat deer and horse meat. At the pole of cold in Oymyakon, one single store is open, and the locals work as fishermen, shepherds or hunters.

The cold has been holding back the flow of tourists to the permafrost for many years. But recently it was the cold that promoted the development of a new tourism concept and became a new brand in the tourism infrastructure of the region.

Those who want to test their strength, to see what real winter looks like, go to Yakutia, the land of permafrost. It is extremely cold here, but the region is very friendly. For tourists, routes have been created that will allow them to study the local life, gastronomic preferences, see the algys ritual, the working days of reindeer breeders, participate in horse-riding routes, sport fishing, hunting, sightseeing, and visit the Pole of Cold festival.