Life Sucks in the Coldest City on Earth.

Imagine living in a city where temperatures get so low your eyebrows and eyelashes develop frost, you spend your entire monthly wage on winter clothes, and you can literally freeze to death if you stay outside for too long, no matter how well dressed you are.

Well, if you moved to Yakutsk, you wouldn’t have to imagine it—you’d live it.

Situated in a barren Russian winter wasteland, Yakutsk looks like something out of a bizarro world—it’s clearly a modern city with modern infrastructure, but everything’s been turned upside down to accommodate the ridiculously cold climate which forced civil engineers to think outside the box the way no one has before.

And yet, in spite of life in Yakutsk sucking and city management itself being painfully difficult, Yakutsk isn’t only a surviving city, it’s a growing one, and not without good reason.

Surviving The Extreme Cold (and Heat)

Let’s get one thing out of the way—Yakutsk is extremely, painfully, incredibly cold. So cold, in fact, its temperatures are unfathomable to anyone who hasn’t experienced them first hand.

It is by far the coldest major city on the planet, although a few smaller settlements in the region record even lower temperatures, and it’s the largest city in continuous permafrost.

The average annual temperature is a record negative eight degrees Celsius or 17.8 Fahrenheit, with winter temperatures consistently dropping below negative 20 Celsius or negative four Fahrenheit. The lowest ever temperature was recorded on February 5th, 1891, at a fantastic negative 64.4 Celsius or negative 83.9 Fahrenheit.

To paint a clearer picture of just how insanely cold this is, Yakutsk is situated right next to the Yana River, which is the home of the lowest temperatures ever recorded outside of Antarctica and Greenland. In its entire history, Yakutsk has never recorded a temperature above freezing between mid-November to mid-March, if you can believe it.

The reason behind this meteorological extreme is Yakutsk’s position. As an inland city located some 1,000 kilometers or 620 miles from the Pacific Ocean and just 450 kilometers or 280 miles south of the Arctic Circle, Yakutsk has very little natural temperature moderation. This is why during the summers in the city, thermometers often record the polar opposite of what you’d expect from the weather—extreme heat.

Yakutsk is the home to the greatest seasonal temperature difference on the entire planet. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 30 degrees Celsius or 86 Fahrenheit, with the hottest ever day being July 17th, 2011, when the temperatures reached 38.4 degrees Celsius or 101.1 Fahrenheit. When coupled with the aforementioned negative 64.4 Celsius record, we get a temperature range of 102 degrees Celsius or 184 Fahrenheit.

Yakuts, the people of the region who also make up the majority of the population of the city, have a plethora of issues to deal with on a daily basis.

One of them is the fact that their cars freeze in the extreme cold. To be specific, the oil and the fuel becomes so thick that the engine can’t run—it’s easier to say that the car itself freezes. The old solution for this, which you might still see practiced here and there in Yakutsk, is simply never turning your car off. To hell with global warming when your car is literally freezing, right?

This, however, is very expensive as the price of gas is around $3.5 dollars per gallon in Yakutsk, and wasting a quarter of your tank while sitting still is terribly irresponsible.

Another solution was using built-in engine heaters that run on electricity, which keep the engine warm enough for the fluids not to freeze.

Heated garages and parking lots were a huge thing when the first ones started popping up around the city. However, there aren’t enough heated garages in Yakutsk for everyone, and on top of the supply and demand imbalance, they’re also very expensive to operate, which is reflected in the price. The cheapest winter-long price comes out to 2.2 million rubles, which is around $27,000 dollars. This is extremely financially taxing because even high-end flats in Yakutsk rarely go for more than 100,000 rubles per month, meaning that keeping your car functional and just unfrozen just for the winter is more expensive than having a roof over your head for an entire year.

This led to the popularization of Natasha—a special car cover invented in 2010 which has since become extremely popular in Yakutsk. It’s essentially a really thick weighted blanket for cars and it costs between 10 and 40,000 rubles, or between $100 and $400 dollars, making it a much more reasonable option, and because of that, the people of Yakutsk are, in fact, the biggest Natasha buyers in the entire world.

Another big issue Yakuts face is losing tire pressure due to the extreme cold. The tires become brittle and lose their shape because of the temperatures and driving like that can feel like you’re driving up Kilimanjaro even if you’re on a straight road. Most people have to carry air pumps in their trunks and some of them, depending on how much they drive, have to use them every single day.

Housing is also a bit different in Yakutsk. For one, most homes don’t have refrigerators, with many who do own them keeping them turned off until the summer. During the winter, people simply keep their food outside and it’s a common practice for someone to have meat, fish, and dairy shelved away in their back yard.

Milk, interestingly, is often sold in solid frozen blocks. You can also get it in bottles, but farms sell solid milk blocks which people often just keep outside in plastic bags and when they need it, they take it inside, cut off a piece of milk roughly the size they need and warm it up.

The biggest difference surrounding housing in Yakutsk and the rest of the world is simply the way the houses are built.

Building in permafrost is generally discouraged—the Cold Climate Housing Research Center advises people not to build in permafrost if they can help it.

First of all, houses in permafrost require more insulation than your average European or American home because the residents could otherwise die from hypothermia, with double glazing also being a common practice. This naturally makes them more expensive, but it’s not the only reason for the high price.

The most glaring problem with housebuilding in Yakutsk was figuring out what to do with the ground under the house.

You see, the problem with building on permafrost—a continuously frozen patch of soil—is that global temperatures are now rising and that permafrost is at risk of thawing, which can result in erosion, seepage into lakes and rivers, and most importantly for our story—soil instability. This happens because permafrost doesn’t melt evenly—the ice melts unevenly, and that causes the ground to shift unevenly.

This results in physical stress on the houses, and that usually manifests in cracked walls, sloped floors, and doors that don’t align with walls. Roads and underground utilities don’t fare much better—as the ground shifts around them pipes can break open and roads can be completely torn up. This is also one of the reasons why most of Yakutsk’s infrastructure was removed from beneath the ground and developed above the surface—it’s warmer when insulated and the chances of water freezing is lower, it’s easier to find leaks and repair the pipes, and most importantly, there’s no warming of the permafrost.

Houses and other constructions in Yakutsk can literally sink into the ground if the soil starts to thaw, and to solve this problem, local construction companies built the foundations on concrete piles. Concrete piles are really long, strong columns that break through the top layers of soil—which is potentially unstable—and rest against more stable soil deep below the surface, which is unaffected by temperature changes. The weight of the whole house is therefore not resting on the top soil level.

Another very important advantage of this type of design is keeping the ground from warming up. Since the house is elevated and not resting on the soil, heat doesn’t transfer to the soil and air is allowed to circulate between the topsoil and the bottom of the house, keeping the ground in permafrost.

With all of that being said it’s clear that real estate is difficult to develop in Yakutsk, and because of that it’s quite expensive for Russian standards with a square meter averaging around $2,000 dollars.

Keeping houses warm is another issue. Russia has the greatest reserve of liquified natural gas in the entire world and the citizens of Yakutsk are extremely reliant on that gas for their survival. However, outages do happen, albeit rarely, and the results are often extreme. If a short outage happens in the middle of the night, you might wake up to a completely frozen house.

Electric radiators aren’t necessarily a solution for that because the water inside them will freeze as well. Longer outages are reason enough for evacuation as people could literally freeze to death.

During January, which is statistically the coldest month in Yakutsk, residents need to keep their radiators on at maximum settings the entire time to keep the cold at bay. Although this is energetically taxing, it costs no more than around $70 dollars a month to keep a one-bedroom flat warm—once again thanks to Russia’s supply of LNG.

To keep the cold out of residential building complexes, the buildings usually have several doors separating the main entry door from the elevators, the stairwell, and the main lobby. Stairs also have to be carpeted because uncarpeted stairs always develop ice, which often results in broken bones.

What about when you leave your house, though? Well, to keep their limbs from spontaneous cold amputations, the inhabitants of this city wear specially designed clothes.

Thick animal fur, especially reindeer fur, is the way to go as it provides better protection from the temperature extremes than modern synthetic clothing, and most people wear around five layers when leaving their homes. Reindeer fur boots are extremely popular because they’re resistant to freezing, which also makes them very expensive.

Wool socks, hats, and gloves are, obviously, a given, as well as face masks to keep the most sensitive skin protected from the icy wind and frostbite, as well as to keep your throat safe from the extremely cold air. During particularly cold days of around -60 degrees Celsius, you can lose feeling in your face within only fifteen minutes of walking around. At the same time, frost will develop on your eyelashes and if you’re not wearing gloves, you will completely lose any sense in your fingers. In extreme cases, finger frostbite can occur within less than half an hour at these temperatures.

That spontaneous cold amputation line is not a joke, by the way. Some homeless people in Yakutsk, who largely spend the winter at the main bus terminal, are missing limbs. This is the result of falling asleep outside in the extreme cold—frostbite so extensive and so extreme that the surgeon has no way to save the limb and is forced to remove it.

Frostbite is, in fact, one of the biggest practical everyday issues for the people of Yakutsk. Unlike most medical conditions, it doesn’t result in pain so you won’t even realize it’s happening. Instead, you just, at some point, realize that you can’t feel your fingers, which is the first warning sign. Fingers, toes, lips, and the nose are the most sensitive body parts, with women having another very specific problem—their earrings.

Since earrings are metal and earlobes are very sensitive, frozen earrings can, ironically, feel like they’re burning.

In order to minimize chances of frostbite, residents of Yakutsk stick to the 15-minute rule. They simply don’t stay outside for longer than 15 minutes. If they’re going somewhere on foot and they haven’t reached their destination within that very short time period, they’ll pop into a store or a bar just to warm up before heading on their way—again for only 15 minutes at a time.

Protective clothing comes at an extreme cost, though. On the lower end, the outfit of an average adult is worth around $2000 dollars. Reindeer boots alone come in at around $800 dollars a pair for the finest models, with synthetic jackets costing around $500 dollars. However, the locals know that synthetic jackets only offer limited protection against the cold, with fur coats being the only proper protection from the cold.

These coats, however, cost between $2000 and $30,000 dollars, meaning that the vast majority of residents of Yakutsk cannot afford them. In fact, given that the average salary there is around $1400 dollars, the average person can barely afford a low-end winter getup.

So, next time you spend a year saving up for something, remember that the people of Yakutsk have to save for a year just to keep themselves from freezing to death.

Because of this, even with multilayered frostproof clothing, the citizens of Yakutsk prefer to stay at home whenever possible. This led to the development of an interesting and very ironic phenomenon—citizens of Yakutsk have lower winter mortality rates than the citizens of cities with milder winters. In fact, the only temperature-related medical conditions that increase with Yakuts are respiratory problems, but that’s due to breathing in extremely cold air, which is unavoidable if you go outside.

Although it sounds illogical, the citizens of the coldest city in the world have learned to stay indoors as much as possible when the temperatures drop, while the people of more temperate areas don’t take winter seriously enough. Because of this their death rates from cerebrovascular and/or ischemic heart disease are lower than in other parts of the world.

The working hours of many institutions are adjusted to the weather conditions, with schools often closing down because of the extreme cold. However, unlike most European countries which close down schools if the temperatures drop to around negative 18 degrees Celsius or negative 0.4 Fahrenheit, the schools in Yakutsk only close down if the thermometers show -50 degrees Celsius or -58 Fahrenheit. If their standards for closing down schools were as low as those around the world, students would spend the majority of their school year at home.

The buses that take the kids to school are also special buses with a thick level of insulation to keep the kids warm.

Aside from just being incredibly cold, Yakutsk also gets very few hours of sunlight through the winter, and to compensate for the lack of that sweet vitamin D, the residents have to take supplements.

Speaking of vitamin D, fruit and other fresh produce is extremely expensive in Yakutsk as it can’t be grown locally and has to be flown in from thousands of miles away. A 100 grams of blueberries, which is just a handful when you think about it, will set you back around three dollars. Strawberries are even more expensive at an incredible $32 dollars for 250 grams.

With that being said, it may seem like life in Yakutsk sucks entirely, but in reality the population of the city hasn’t dropped or stagnated since the 19th century. Between 1926 and 2026, it grew from 10,500 to around 373,000 residents. That kind of natural growth wouldn’t be the case if life in Yakutsk truly sucked, making everyone wonder what’s so special about the city stuck in ice.

Why Do People Keep Moving To Yakutsk?

If you watch and read interviews with the people of Yakutsk, they’ll tell you quite openly why they’re refusing to move to warmer places, or even cold places but with less extreme temperatures.

First of all, Yakuts are, unlike their home, very warm and welcoming, and a people with a strong ethnic identity. They can leave Yakutia and Yakutsk, but they choose not to because they want to stay close to the people and the land they know.

Secondly, some Yakuts say that they’ve become so accustomed to the extreme cold that going to a relatively warm place feels like they’ve been transported to hell.

Thirdly, we’re talking about people who’ve inhabited this extremely cold area since the 1600s. In spite of everything said so far about how life in Yakutsk sucks because people have to jump through hundreds of hoops just to survive, Yakuts see this as nothing more than a minor nuisance. Sure, you need to keep the heating on all the time and you have to cover your car with a 20-kilogram blanket every single time you leave it outside, even if it’s just for 15 minutes, but life still goes on in Yakutsk.

People still hang out with their friends, they still follow sports, they still go to the cinema, and they still argue about politics. The city has a very active film industry which has been recognized internationally, and the local music scene is very much alive, especially in the punk and punk-rock departments. Yakuts have, if anything, proven that life doesn’t stop just because it’s cold outside.

And the final reason people aren’t leaving the region is because Yakutsk is very economically powerful for such an isolated city. This is something that seemingly everyone keeps forgetting about, but there’s a reason why the city was established and why it grew so much in size within only 100 years.

Yakutsk is the capital of the Republic of Sakha, which is in terms of pure land area the largest subject of the Russian Federation as it takes up more than 3,100,000 square kilometers, which is slightly larger than India’s land mass.

Aside from being larger than the most populous country on the planet, Sakha Republic is exceedingly rich in crudes. 99% of Russia’s diamonds and 25% of the all the world’s diamonds, absolutely all of Russia’s antimony, half of all of its tin, and one third of all its gold is mined in Sakha Republic, which is why Yakutsk is seen as the mining capital of Russia. Coal deposits are incredibly rich as well—in theory, the mines surrounding Yakutsk are rich enough to supply the entire of the Russian Far East.

With this being said it’s no surprise that several mining companies set up their headquarters in Yakutsk, and that means that there’s plenty of job opportunities for young people. In 2021, the region exported a total of $5.55 billion dollars in value of goods, making it the 16th largest exporter out of Russia’s 85 federal subjects.

The gold mining industry started in 1923 with the Soviet Union starting to mine for diamonds in the 1960s, and according to some estimations, by the late 1980s, Yakutia—which is the Yakut word for Sakha—was bringing around $4 billion dollars into the Soviet treasury annually.

This would result in huge migrations. Between 1966 and 1996, according to estimates of Russian sociologists, about four million people have moved to and moved away from the Republic, a huge chunk of that number staying in Yakutsk. In 1926, the region had just under 290,000 residents—a hundred years later, it has more than a million.

A lot of those people were incentivized by the USSR’s programs to move to the region. The USSR, famously known for sending people to extremely remote internment camps also wanted to send people to extremely remote regions, such as Yakutia, to further develop them and exploit natural resources. The issue was, they couldn’t just force people to go, so they offered the so-called ‘northern incentives’. Note that these incentives were only given to newcomers, not to the natives of Yakutia.

The incentives included massive bonuses, so much so that salaries in Yakutia during the USSR were four times larger than the salaries in a ‘normal’ USSR region. That made Yakutia and its capital a migrational hotspot, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, at least not according to the natives who felt that the massive influx of non-natives looking to make their fortune here was bad for the environment. This wasn’t necessarily untrue—the years of diamond and gold mining had contaminated the water with thallium salts and mercury, both used in gold mining, while the 12 underground explosions, one of which came with a radiation leak, weren’t exactly a good thing either.

Nevertheless, Yakutia and Yakutsk became one of the most sought after locations in the entire USSR in the second half of the 20th century, and the region somewhat retained that status in modern day Russia of the 21st century.

Russia takes really good care of Yakutia and Yakutsk as well. It’s a critical part of the country because of the mining potential and Moscow really likes its diamonds and gold. Former Russian bank powerhouses—Tokobank and Inkombank, both of which collapsed in the nineties—diverted Yakutian funds to Moscow, but made sure that the locals themselves were happy and taken care of well enough to keep the money pipeline pumping.

Aside from the mining industry, which is alive and thriving to this day, Yakutsk has a growing IT industry, as well as acting as the largest transport hub for the region. The city has its own airport and the Republic has its own airline, with the Lena River, on which the city lies, being an crucial transport route. During the winter, trucks regularly use it to transport goods as the ice is thick and strong enough to support their weight. At the time of recording, the city of Yakutsk is not connected to a highway during the winter because the highway is on the other side of the river, but a bridge is currently under construction and should be finished by the end of the decade.

Tourism has also started playing a large part in the economy as of late with its role constantly growing. The Lena Pillars Nature Park, which can only be navigated by river in the summer, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and by far the most visited spot in the Republic.

This is what caused the population boom in Yakutsk—job opportunities opened up and people started leaving rural settlements for the urban, vibrant center, and although it may be instinctive to think that the city is culturally and socially dead because of how difficult it is to live there, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Things are a bit different now because Russia invaded Ukraine and cut itself off from the majority of the world, but before that happened, Yakutsk hosted sport events and music festivals. Even today, in spite of everything happening, the local university still participates in exchange programs, accepting students from faraway countries and showing them what life in permafrost looks like.

One thing that’s above all most important to understanding why Yakutsk is seemingly thriving is the simple fact that the natives love their home and they don’t see the survival aspect of their lives as a challenge—they see it as a way of life.

This was perhaps best put into words by French photographer Alexis Pazoumian who spent quite a lot of time in Yakutsk. When talking about what motivates the locals to stay in such an unfriendly place, he said: “If I had to summarise what struck me the most when I was there, I would say it was the drive to live, the survival instinct, which seems to be forgotten in the comfort and safety of our cities.”

To them, the human drive to tame the unforgiving wilderness, and the pride that comes in reining in the cold the same way hundreds of their forefathers have done before them is what keeps them in Yakutsk, and very few of them would like to have it any other way.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average annual temperature in Yakutsk?

The average annual temperature in Yakutsk is negative eight degrees Celsius or 17.8 Fahrenheit.

What was the lowest ever temperature recorded in Yakutsk and when?

The lowest ever temperature recorded in Yakutsk was negative 64.4 Celsius or negative 83.9 Fahrenheit on February 5th, 1891.

What is the greatest seasonal temperature difference on the planet and where is it found?

The greatest seasonal temperature difference on the entire planet is found in Yakutsk, with a temperature range of 102 degrees Celsius or 184 Fahrenheit between the record low of negative 64.4 Celsius and the record high of 38.4 degrees Celsius.

What is ‘Natasha’ and why is it popular in Yakutsk?

Natasha is a special car cover invented in 2010 that is essentially a thick weighted blanket for cars. It costs between $100 and $400 dollars, making it a much more reasonable option than heated garages, and the people of Yakutsk are the biggest Natasha buyers in the entire world.

How do houses in Yakutsk deal with the problem of permafrost thawing?

Houses in Yakutsk are built on concrete piles, which are long, strong columns that break through potentially unstable top layers of soil and rest against more stable soil deep below the surface. This design also keeps heat from transferring to the soil, allowing air circulation that maintains the permafrost.

What is the ‘15-minute rule’ in Yakutsk?

The 15-minute rule is a practice where residents of Yakutsk simply don’t stay outside for longer than 15 minutes at a time. If they haven’t reached their destination within that time, they’ll pop into a store or bar to warm up before continuing.

Why do citizens of Yakutsk have lower winter mortality rates than cities with milder winters?

Citizens of Yakutsk have lower winter mortality rates because they have learned to stay indoors as much as possible when temperatures drop, while people in more temperate areas don’t take winter seriously enough. Their death rates from cerebrovascular and/or ischemic heart disease are lower than in other parts of the world.

At what temperature do schools in Yakutsk close down?

Schools in Yakutsk only close down if thermometers show -50 degrees Celsius or -58 Fahrenheit, unlike most European countries which close at around negative 18 degrees Celsius.

What natural resources make Yakutsk economically powerful?

Yakutsk is the mining capital of Russia. The Sakha Republic produces 99% of Russia’s diamonds and 25% of all the world’s diamonds, all of Russia’s antimony, half of its tin, one third of its gold, and has incredibly rich coal deposits.

What were the ‘northern incentives’ offered by the USSR?

The USSR offered ‘northern incentives’ to encourage people to move to remote regions like Yakutia, including massive bonuses that made salaries four times larger than in ‘normal’ USSR regions. These incentives were only given to newcomers, not natives of Yakutia.

Sources

• Original Places video: Life Sucks in the Coldest City on Earth.
• Hero image source by SentinelHub / openverse, by.