Coldest town on Earth
Amos Chapple’s Photographs of the coldest town on Earth
By hipstomp/Rain Noe From Core77
Globetrotting photographer Amos Chapple has shot in sixty countries, eventually working his way up to be named Cathay Pacific’s Travel Photographer of the Year for ’09. More recently, New Zealand native Chapple photographed a region with weather very opposite from that of his home country: Oymyakon, Russia, where the average winter temperature is negative-58 Fahrenheit (negative-50 Celsius). As Chapple told Weather.com, “occasionally my saliva would freeze into needles that would prick my lips,” and “focusing the lens would sometimes be as challenging as opening a pickle jar.”
Viewing these photos officially means you can never complain about being cold ever again. The temperature is so brutal that Oymyakon residents’ lives are structured around surviving it, with inconveniences aplenty. For example: No wearing eyeglasses outdoors, unless you want them to stick to your skin. Even worse, there’s no indoor plumbing. It’s impossible to keep underground pipes from not freezing, so guess where you’ll go when you need to use the bathroom!
Then there’s the gas situation: When you stop your car, to run into a store for instance, you cannot turn the car off, or it won’t start again. So everyone leaves their cars running (except at night, when they’re parked in heated garages)…
…which means 24-hour gas stations like this one are essentially the lifeblood of the town.
Needless to say, if you run out of gas on the way into town, you are probably going to get frostbite and die. And when you die, they’re going to light a bonfire. Not to honor your short, frosty life, but because bonfires need to be lit every time there’s a funeral, just to make the ground warm enough to dig a grave in. The living, meanwhile, are kept warm by the town’s coal-fired plant.
Despite the insane temperatures, there are actually people who make their living working outdoors, like this maniac of a fishmonger.
So yeah, maybe the low 20s we’re currently enjoying here in NYC ain’t so bad after all.
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