It may not come as a surprise that the world’s coldest recorded place is in the Antarctic.

The place is called the East Antarctic Plateau. On the high ridge of the East Antarctic Plateau, the temperature can drop to as low as -93.2°C   (-136°F) !

The Antarctic regions are always cold. The temperatures there generally average around -83°C  (-127°F).

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The record temperature was discovered using satellite data. It was announced as a new record in 2010. The previous highest temperature recorded of -89.2°C (-128.6°F) had been held for around 30 years by a location just nearby.

Though the coldest place in the world is in Antarctica, it is not inhabited.

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The coldest inhabited place in the world is Oymyakon, Russia.

The village of Oymyakon in Russia, known as the ‘Pole of the Cold’, is the coldest permanently inhabited settlement in the world.

Oymakon coldest inhabited place

January temperatures in Oymyakon average around -50°C (-58°F) but the coldest ever recorded temperature was -71.2°C  (-96.16°F)  in 1924.

Ironically, the word ‘Oymyakon’ actually means 'non-freezing water'. The village is named this due to a nearby hot spring.  

The village is home to around 500 people. In the 1920’s and 1930’s the place was merely a stopover for reindeer herders who would water their flocks from the thermal spring.

The Soviet government then decided, in its efforts to settle nomadic populations, believing them to be difficult to control and technologically and culturally backward, to make the site a permanent settlement, and so became Oymyakon, The Pole in the Cold.

 

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