Because of the cold, cell phone batteries drain almost immediately outside. Nothing metallic can be touched without your skin peeling off! Glasses can’t be worn outdoors or they’ll get stuck. Pen ink freezes, so you can’t write outside, and you have to wear heavy furs if you want to keep the chill off your body. Cars have to be parked in heated garages. If they’re outside, they have to be kept running nonstop all night.

Just FYI… frozen ground means that there’s no working indoor plumbing. Instead, toilets are in outhouses — little buildings outside. Hopefully, they’re heated! There are also no showers because there’s no running water — the water would simply freeze! — so the locals bathe in special steam baths instead. And when the locals want to have funerals, they have to have a bonfire first to warm the ground for a while so that they can dig.

So how does anyone live here?

Well, Oymyakon means “unfrozen water” because there’s a small hot spring in the city. Hot spring might be an exaggeration — it’s more like 35°F (1.6°C), just above freezing. But a hundred years ago, reindeer herders (people who own reindeer and keep them together in a group to protect them against predators or from getting lost) used to visit the spring with their herds so their animals could drink, and they kept coming back until the village became permanent. The Russian government promised other people high wages for working in such a difficult place, and they moved there, too. About 500 people live in Oymyakon today.

The locals laugh at people who claim it’s cold. Schools don’t close unless the weather is below – 60°F. During the winter, when the days get short, night can be as long as 21 hours — that’s only three hours a day of daylight! Kids have recess in the pitch black! Farmers will bring their cows to the spring to drink and then take them back to heated stables. Very few crops can grow in Oymyakon, so people don’t eat many vegetables. They stick to fish and meat, which they sometimes eat frozen!

At the end of the winter, Oymyakon hosts a “Cold Pole Festival.” The locals have reindeer races, dog sledding, ice fishing, and build beautiful ice sculptures. The locals show off their culture, their artwork, and the different costumes of their people. Guests are invited, but it’s not exactly easy to drop by! Oymyakon has only about a thousand visitors a year.

At the center of the town square, there is a monument to remember the time in 1924 that the temperature dropped to –96°F!

The temperature in Oymyakon can change drastically even over a few weeks — it can rise and fall over 100 degrees over the year.

In the summer, it’s a totally different story in the coldest village on earth!

Temperatures are usually around 60 to 70°F (15–21°C), and can sometimes go as high as 90°F (32°C). The snow melts, and animals — especially bugs — appear in the once cold town. The summers are short, though, especially compared to the winters, and the locals complain all the time about the warm weather.

So in the end, you and the people in Oymyakon aren’t all that different!

NEW SUMMER CONTEST

Squizzle’s feeling hot, in need of a treat,
An ice cream razzle sundae, isn’t that fun to eat?!

So, grab your ingredients, colorful and bright,
And create a Treeo treat that’s a pure delight.

Mix up your flavors, the crazier the better,
And make a sweet sundae we’ll surely remember.

Snap a pic of your creation, cool and grand,
Send it to Treeo, the coolest mag in the land.

The winner’s recipe and photo on our pages will be shown,
And a Play and Freeze Ice Cream Ball will be yours to own!

Squizzle can’t wait to see your sweet surprise….

(Originally featured in Treeo, Issue 1020)