Verkhoyansk

Verkhoyansk (Russian: Верхоя́нск; Sakha: Үөһээ Дьааҥы, Üöhəə Çaaŋı) is a town in Verkhoyansky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia, situated on the Yana River, near the Arctic Circle, 675 kilometers (419 mi) from Yakutsk. Population: 1,311 (2010 Census preliminary results);^[1] 1,434 (2002 Census);^[2] 1,883 (1989 Census).^[4]

There is a river port, an airport, a fur-collecting depot, and the center of a reindeer-raising area.

History

Cossacks founded an ostrog in 1638, 90 kilometers (56 mi) southwest of the modern town. In 1775, it was moved to the left bank of the Yana River, to facilitate tax collection. It was granted town status in 1817. Between the 1860s and 1917, the town was a place of political exile, with some of the more prominent exiles including the Polish writer Wacław Sieroszewski, as well as Bolshevik revolutionaries Ivan Babushkin and Viktor Nogin.

Climate

Verkhoyansk is notable chiefly for its exceptionally low winter temperatures and some of the greatest temperature differences between summer and winter on Earth. Average monthly temperatures range from −45.8 °C (−50.4 °F) in January to +16.9 °C (62.42 °F) in July. Mean monthly temperatures are below freezing from October through April and exceed +10 °C (50 °F) from June through August, with the intervening months of May and September constituting very short transitional seasons. Verkhoyansk has an extreme subarctic climate (Köppen Dfd) dominated much of the year by high pressure. This has the effect of cutting off the region from warming influences in winter and together with little cloud cover leads to extensive heat losses during the cooler months. The warmest month on record is July 2010 at +20.8 °C (69.44 °F).^[5]

Together with Oymyakon, Verkhoyansk is one of the places considered the northern Pole of Cold. The lowest temperature recorded there, in 1892, was −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F), though there is some question as to exactly what the original measurement was.^[6] Additionally, Verkhoyansk has recorded a temperature as high as +37.3 °C (99.14 °F), yielding a temperature range of 105.1 °C (189.2 °F). In this area, temperature inversions consistently form in winter due to the extremely cold and dense air of the Siberian High pooling in deep hollows, with the result that temperatures increase rather than decrease with higher altitude.

Verkhoyansk has a dry climate with little rainfall or snowfall; the average annual precipitation is 173 millimeters (6.8 in). Although no month can be described as truly wet, there are strong seasonal differences in precipitation, with the summer being much wetter than the winter. Winter precipitation is extremely light largely on account of the dominance of high pressure at this time of year. Snow is actually most likely in October and May when the weather is less dry than in the winter months proper.

References