Oymyakon, The World’s Coldest Permanently Inhabited Village
Ilya Varlamov/Wikimedia CommonsA resident of Oymyakon bundled up against the cold.
Oymyakon, a remote village in eastern Siberia’s Sakha Republic, holds the title of the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth. There, around 500 residents face some of the harshest temperatures imaginable.
Oymyakon’s name derives from a word meaning “water that doesn’t freeze,” a nod to a nearby thermal spring, which was used often throughout the 1920s as a watering hole for traveling reindeer herders.
On Feb. 6, 1933, Oymyakon reported a bone-chilling temperature of negative 89.9 degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest on record in Russia. Even aside from that extreme low, the temperature in the village has never risen above freezing between the end of October and mid-March.
Today, Oymyakon has a population of around 500 residents who rely on traditional practices such as reindeer herding, hunting, and fishing for sustenance. Understandably, modern conveniences are limited. Many homes still use coal and wood for heating, for example, and residents often utilize outhouses since indoor plumbing pipes freeze.
The village’s extreme climate has garnered international attention, drawing tourists and researchers interested in experiencing and studying life in such an inhospitable environment.
In 2015, a New Zealand photographer named Amos Chapple told Smithsonian Magazine about his recent visit to Oymyakon. “The streets were just empty,” Chapple recalled. “I had expected that they would be accustomed to the cold and there would be everyday life happening in the streets, but instead people were very wary of the cold.”
As it turns out, even if you live your entire life in the bitter cold, there are some temperatures humans just can’t adjust to.
