Oymyakon: Coldest settlement on earth hit -62C - then the thermometer broke

International Business Times ^ | January 15, 2018 | Claire Toureille

[EdnaMode]

This Siberian village's thermometer broke last night because of how cold it was.

Oymyakon, in the Siberian region of Yakutia, is the coldest inhabited village on Earth. Each winter, it records some of the world's lowest temperatures and the town seems frozen in time.

On 14 January, Oymyakon got so cold, its brand new thermometer broke after reaching a mind numbing -62C, reports the Siberian Times. In comparison, the only other places to get this cold or colder are unpopulated areas of Antarctica.

But locals have reported temperatures far colder than the official -62C on their properties, thanks to their own thermometers. For the town's 500 inhabitants, it's just business as usual. Oymyakon is the Pole of Cold, the point in the Northern Hemisphere where it gets the coldest. During the winter season, the temperature reaches an average of -45C. But life doesn't stop for a slight chill.

A group of Chinese tourists braved the freezing temperature and visited a spring over the weekend, where they were filmed dancing in their swimwear, earning the admiration of locals.

[DuncanWaring]

Had an overnight -10F a week-or-so ago. Coldest I remember ever seeing here was about -13F.

Average low here this time of year is about +10F.

[G Larry]

Oymyakon

Eastern Jewish settlement?

[headsonpikes]

I’m foolish enough to still be gazing out the window at just shy of two feet of now old snow.

Oh well, there shouldn’t be more than another 6 to 8 weeks of real winter, then it’s wait for break-up, then mosquito season - what a paradise!

[Hieronymus]

I saw -60 in Alaska, but there was no sunrise. With the windchill it was -140. I remember the silence, punctuated by shattering cracks.

---

Now that is cold.

[donaldo]

Thanks. I’d still like to know the extent of polar ice as of now and whether it has increased over the last month or two.

The following confirms my suspicion of Google’s bias:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/08/a-method-of-google-search-bias-quantification-and-its-application-in-climate-debate-and-general-political-discourse/

[donaldo]

I just typed these very words in a Google search:

“Yes, north polar ice is increasing dramatically in 2018.”

To be honest I don’t know one way or another. But the Google search had as its number one answer an article from September 19, 2017!

The fourth Google entry was an article from the Guardian dated August, 21, 2016 stating “Next year, or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice.” Nothing about now.

What gives? Is it bias or some sort of glitch? Is it that no one knows about the extent of polar ice right now? I doubt it.

[citizen]

That scene looks rather pretty. Cold but pretty.

[dsrtsage]

“Thanks. I’d still like to know the extent of polar ice as of now and whether it has increased over the last month or two.”

Everything and everything you want to know about current and ‘hysterical data’ for both arctic and antarctic sea ice is either on that page, or the links from it.

[Oil Object Insp]

I really like it, yes it made an impression. Always have a plan, and realize any plan can go south, have a plan when the plan goes South. Sometimes no matter your best efforts things do not work out and if you can’t rely on yourself there is no help. A more pure or precise distillation of self reliance, only on ones’self I have not read.

[Oil Object Insp]

I wonder what they used as fluid in the thermometer? Alcohol and hydrocarbons won’t work, Mercury is a no go. Whatever it was I would be it’s Hazmat spilling. And I wonder what the upper limit of the thing was before it broke. That cold anything other than electricity has no ability to move. And they had tourist it moving in that weather, that’s hard core. Jack London wouldn’t have dared write a story like that, no one would have though people would REALLY do that kind of thing.

[freefdny]

I typed a few anti global warming questions into google last week just for fun. To say the responses were skewed would be an understatement. Who knew Joe Goebbels wrote the algorithm? The whole idea that is now being pushed that there really was no pause in global warming because they had to go back and readjust some of the temperatures cracks me up. I thought the science was settled.