oymyakon

Oymyakon is a rural locality of the Oymyakonsky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia. It is said to be named after the Oymyakon River, whose name reportedly comes from the Even word kheium, meaning "unfrozen patch of water; place where fish spend the winter." It is located along the Indigirka River. It is one of the coldest permanently inhabited localities on earth, with down to -50°C in the winter. There are no roads connecting it to the rest of the countries in the summer, but the Indigirka River serves as a highway to bring food and supplies to the remote village by truck in the winter, and by boat in the summer. However, it can take up several days to get to any other inhabited place such as Oust-Nera or Yakoutsk. Around the village are hundreds and hundreds of miles of tundra and forest before any other inhabited place or city. Some live in the forest, in small cabins made of wood and metal, sometimes along the river. The reindeers are lead to their pastures, even in the winter, and some even keep fishing in the river even with the ice being sometimes more than a meter thick. Not far from Oymyakon, the Indigirka river takes a turn, creating an elbow, in the shape of a small lake. The town hosts around 500 habitants, who live mostly from hunting, fishing and, in the summer, cultivating the fields. It has an inn for food and bedding, a garage, a general store and a hardware store.

Some years the temperature drops below 0 °C (32 °F) in late September and may remain below freezing until mid-May. In Oymyakon sometimes the average minimum temperature for January, February and December remains below −50 °C (−58 °F). Sometimes summer months can also be quite cold, but June and July are the only months where temperature has never dropped below −10 °C (14 °F). Oymyakon and Verkhoyansk are the only two permanently inhabited places in the world that have recorded temperatures below −60.0 °C (−76 °F) for every day in January. Oymyakon has never recorded an above freezing temperature between October 25 and March 17.

Although winters in Oymyakon are long and excessively cold, summers are mild to warm, sometimes hot. The warmest month on record is July 2010 with an average temperature of +18.7 °C (65.7 °F).[citation needed] In June, July and August temperatures over 30 °C (86 °F) are not rare during the day. On July 28, 2010, Oymyakon recorded a record high temperature of 34.6 °C (94 °F), yielding a temperature range of 102.3 °C (184.1 °F). Verkhoyansk and Yakutsk are the only other places in the world with a temperature amplitude higher than 100 °C (180 °F).

Why would someone come here? Well, some of us have lived here their whole lives, some simply came looking for a more rustic life, or maybe to run away from their past.