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Winter`s Bite Comes Late but Hard to the Siberian Pole of Cold

By AccuWeather, $content.credit

Last update: November 3, 2009 - 2:25 PM

Russian Siberia's notorious 'pole of cold,' site of Earth's coldest permanent settlements, has had a dramatic downturn in temperature during the last month.

October, normally the month in which the bitter cold of winter begins to bite, started mild, at least relatively. However, when the bitter cold did kick in toward the end of the month, it clamped down hard.

At Verkhoyansk, which is one of the few coldest settlements, the first day of the month had an average temperature of 35 degrees, or 16 degrees above normal, and the average temperature for the month through the 26th was still 8 degrees above normal.

Then the bottom fell out. By the close of the month, temperatures dove 15 degrees below normal. On the 31st, the average temperature for the day, including a low of -36, was -30 degrees. Thus, within little more than four weeks, the daily average temperature dropped by a full 65 degrees. For comparison, very few locations in the lower 48 states have such a wide temperature swing between summer and winter, let alone within a month.

Story by AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Jim Andrews.

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