Please register to access this content.
To continue viewing the content you love, please sign in or create a new account
Dismiss
This content is for our paying subscribers only

World Europe

'Dress like a cabbage': Surviving Yakutsk, the world's coldest city

Residents of the mining city often see the thermometer regularly drop well below minus 40



Fish vendors Marina Krivolutskaya and Marianna Ugai pose for a picture at an open-air market on a frosty day in Yakutsk, Russia.
Image Credit: Reuters

Yakutsk: Temperatures have plunged to minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit) this week in Yakutsk during an abnormally long cold snap in the Siberian city known as the coldest on earth.

Located 5,000 km (3,100 miles) east of Moscow on the permafrost of the Russian Far East, residents of the mining city often see the thermometer regularly drop well below minus 40.

"You can't fight it. You either adjust and dress accordingly or you suffer," said Anastasia Gruzdeva, outside in two scarves, two pairs of gloves and multiple hats and hoods.

"You don't really feel the cold in the city. Or maybe it's just the brain prepares you for it, and tells you everything is normal," she added in the city shrouded by icy mist.

Advertisement

A spirit thermometer displays the approximate air temperature minus 48 degrees Celsius (minus 54.4 degrees Fahrenheit) outside a hotel in central Yakutsk, Russia

Vendor Yegor Dyachkovsky, 45, poses for a picture at an open-air market on a frosty day in Yakutsk, Russia

A pedestrian crosses a road on a frosty day in Yakutsk, Russia.

1 of 3

Another resident, Nurgusun Starostina, who sells frozen fish at a market without the need for a fridge or freezer, said there were no special secrets to deal with the cold.

Advertisement