New Delhi: You thought your winters were bad? No! You might literally freeze if you’re out walking in Russia right now.
In the village of Oymyakon, state-owned Russian television showed the mercury falling to the bottom of a thermometer that was only set up to measure down to minus 50 degrees. Even thermometers can’t keep up with the plunging temperatures in Russia’s remote Yakutia region, which hit minus 67 degrees Celsius in this week.
It seems like Colder climates favour Russia more than any other country, the extreme cold temperature in the remote village of Siberia; is cold enough to give you frostbite in minutes — and to freeze your eyelashes.
Siberia is a breeding ground for extremely cold temperatures, thanks to its long winter nights, abundance of snow and its location deep in Russia's interior.
The village there is therefore, believed to be the coldest permanently inhabited settlement on Earth. The village is located below the Arctic Circle with only 500 residents.
Oymyakon's position at 2,264 feet (690 meters) above sea level in a valley between two mountain ranges also contributes to its chilly climate.
The lowest recorded temperature there was -71.2 degrees Celsius (-96.16 Fahrenheit) but the average winter temperatures hang around -58°F (-50°C).
Even though the coldest month is February but the temperatures go quite low for December, January, and February up to minus fifty.
However, cold winter weather can be dangerous in the first place, but frozen eyelashes can also be a hazard to a person’s sight. In this place, the human being cannot stay for a longer time as hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows instantly get froze even it is difficult to breathe as the air is also so cold.
So far this year, the residents of Oymyakon have endured eight consecutive mornings with lows of minus 50 degrees Celsius or colder. Last Sunday, temperature dipped to minus 59.6 degrees Celsius, enough to cause frostbite in less than five minutes to any areas of exposed skin.
But still in such seemingly inhuman conditions, the local population has managed to find a compromise with nature. Local residents enjoy clean air and water, an active lifestyle and healthy food. Their main winter diet is mostly meat-based, sometimes eaten raw or frozen, due to the inability to grow crops in the frigid temperatures. Some regional specialties include stroganina, which is raw, long-sliced frozen fish; reindeer meat; raw, frozen horse liver, and ice cubes of horse blood with macaroni, according to news reports.
The village was once a stopover in the 1920s and ’30s for reindeer herders who would water their flocks at a thermal spring that didn’t freeze. This is only one of the contradictions about life in Oymyakon.
In the village, the water in the Oymyakon River does not freeze. But this is not the result of magic. The ground here is permanently frozen to a depth of 5,000 feet; under the pressure from the frozen earth, the ground water escapes to the surface.
In the language of the local people, the Tungus, "oymyakon" means “unfrozen river” or “the place where fish spend the winter."
There is no wind there, and the weather is always sunny; 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. 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 has grown year after year.
References:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk
http://topbestreporter.com
http://edition.cnn.com
http://www.financialexpress.com