Coldest City in the World

Preview:

Citation preview

PowerPoint Show by Andrew ♫ Turn on Speakers

Welcome to the tiny Russian town of Oymyakon - the coldest inhabited place on earth - where temperatures drop to -58 degrees Fahrenheit.

The coldest inhabited place on Earth is a small village in the Siberian tundra called Oymyakon.

Average winter temperatures hang around -58 degrees Fahrenheit and only a few hundred people brave the cold to call the town home.

Photographer Amos Chapple, of New Zealand, took a trip to the Russian village and quickly learned just how painful the plunging temperatures can be.

'I was wearing thin trousers when I first stepped outside into −47 degrees Celsius (−52 degrees Fahrenheit). I remember feeling like the cold was physically gripping my legs,' he said.

Chapple traveled from Yakutsk , the world's coldest major city with a population of 300,000, to Oymyakon, the world's coldest inhabited area with a population of 500.

Interesting ways of life began to emerge from Chapple's time in Oymyakon (pictured), which ironically means 'unfrozen water', according to Weather.com.

He noted that residents live off a diet of primarily meat due to the fact that vegetables and such are unable to survive in the freezing temperatures.

The city and the town are 21 hours apart by car and about 577 miles apart. They are in the northeastern part of the Siberian tundra.

Because the ground is always frozen, there is little indoor plumbing and most bathrooms are outhouses and cell phones and car engines are constantly in peril of freezing over.

If cars aren't left running outside, they must be kept in a heated garage to prevent damage and people will walk but try and get out of the cold as quickly as possible.

Most people will spend as little time outdoors as possible to avoid the frigid temperatures. Often the outdoors are dark and desolate, with only three hours of light in the winter.

Chapple said he traveled to Oymyakon to find an uplifting story but said the cold created some new challenges in his photography.

Chapple said he was surprised to find that traffic lights functioned properly in this cold.

He told Weather.com that his lens would freeze over and became impossible to focus, likening it to a pickle jar. Statue of Ivan Kraft, one of the first governors of Yakutsk, pictured.

A visiting tourist stands in front of one of the monuments.

A local woman holds an arctic hare, on sale along with her stock of frozen fish in the central market.

Even when traveling on a city bus, people have to bundle-up.

A team of Reindeer and sleigh are parked on the side of a road.