This is nearly as many degrees below freezing as the world's highest is abovethe freezing mark!And this is how cold it was on the first morning of the winter at Oymyakon,Russia.Specifically, the low Wednesday morning, Dec. 22, was -73 F, or -58.6 C.
Indeed, the temperature was below -70 F hours before the winter solstice tookplace.
During the daytime Wednesday, with the sun barely breaking the southernhorizon, the temperature crept upward to only -69 F, or -56.0 C, only to slipback below -70 F late in the day.
View Larger MapCold as it is, -70 F is not an unusual reading during December, January, andeven February at Oymyakon. This is, after all, the heart of the Siberian "poleof cold," site of the coldest permanent settlements on Earth.
Last January was as cold as -74 F (-58.9 C). And the last -70 F in a month ofDecember happened in 2008.
At the start of winter, the normal high temperature at Oymyakon is -52 F, andthe normal low is -57 F.
But the lowest temperature on record here was reached on February 6, 1933, witha reading of -90 F, or -67.7 C. Thus, Oymyakon shares the title of coldestpermanent settlement with Verkhoyansk, another "pole of cold" settlementlocated 400 miles farther to the northwest.
Story by Jim Andrews, AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist
