On the frozen banks of a Siberian river, a city of roughly 300,000 people has learned to treat temperatures that can freeze lungs as a daily inconvenience rather than a catastrophe. Cars crack, metal snaps and breath crystallises in midair, yet life in this place keeps moving, from school lessons to open-air markets. I set out to understand how a community not only survives such brutality, but insists on building a future in it.
The answer lies in a mix of geography, engineering and stubborn human routine. The city is remote, locked in permafrost and routinely colder than a household freezer, but it is also a regional capital, a mining hub and a cultural centre that anchors people to the land. The result is a metropolis that looks, at first glance, like any other mid‑sized city, until you notice the cars idling for hours and the apartment blocks perched on stilts.
The coldest big city on Earth
The city in question is Yakutsk, widely described as the coldest city on Earth where winter temperatures are not a passing weather event but a defining feature of urban life. It sits as the capital and largest city of Sakha, in the far east of Russia, roughly 450 km (280 mi) south of the Arctic Circle, a position that locks it into long, dark winters and short, intense summers. That geography, combined with continental air masses, helps explain why the city has become shorthand for climatic extremes.
Population figures underline how remarkable its endurance is. The urban area is home to an estimated 300,000 people, a number that would be unremarkable in a temperate capital but is striking in a place where simply stepping outside can be hazardous. Recent reporting notes that the city’s population, estimated at around 300,000 people, manages to function even when schools close and lessons move online because of the cold. For many residents, this is not just about surviving, it is about living in a place they consider home.
Cold that breaks cars and bites lungs
In winter, the numbers attached to Yakutsk’s weather read like a dare. In Yakutsk, Russia one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth, winter temperatures can plunge below 40°C and even approach 50°C below zero, levels at which exposed skin can be damaged in minutes and breathing unprotected air can feel like inhaling needles. Residents describe days when it is minus 48° C, as one local named Kuni does in a video diary that shows eyelashes frosting over during a short walk. At those temperatures, the air itself seems to thicken, and the city’s famous fog is not just mist but a visible manifestation of human breath and exhaust freezing and hanging low.
That cold is not an abstract statistic, it is a mechanical threat. In Yakutsk, temperatures drop so low that shutting off your engine can destroy it, because Oil thickens, batteries die and restarting becomes a gamble. Locals leave vehicles idling for hours in parking lots, string power cables from apartment windows to engine block heaters and accept that some cars will simply not make it through the season. One report describes how this city breaks cars and freezes lungs yet still has over 300,000 people going about their business, a reminder that the human body and modern machinery are pushed to their limits here.
Engineering a city on permafrost
Survival in Yakutsk is not just about clothing and courage, it is about infrastructure that acknowledges the ground itself is frozen. The city is built on permafrost, a layer of soil that remains below freezing year round, which means any heat from buildings can destabilise foundations if it seeps downward. To avoid that, many structures are constructed on deep stilts that lift them above the earth, an approach that has turned the skyline into a forest of concrete legs. One detailed account notes that the city is Yakutsk, capital of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in Russia, where buildings on stilts are not an architectural flourish but an engineering necessity for a population exceeding 300 thousand.
Urban planners have had to think in three dimensions, routing water, sewage and heating above ground in insulated conduits that snake between apartment blocks like exposed arteries. The wider region is part of a vast Siberian territory that spans about 1.2 m square miles, and the engineering lessons learned here are increasingly relevant as warming temperatures threaten to soften permafrost in other northern settlements. For now, Yakutsk’s stilts and raised pipelines are a visible sign of how a city can adapt its bones to a hostile environment rather than trying to bend the climate to its will.
Daily life in a deep freeze
For residents, the cold is not a spectacle, it is the background to ordinary routines. Earlier this winter, temperatures plunged to around minus 45 C, and schools reportedly remained closed on Monday, with children switching to online lessons while parents still headed to work. Local reports describe how the city’s population, estimated at around 300,000 people, manages the harsh winter conditions by layering heavy winter attire and treating the cold as tolerable rather than exceptional, even as markets operate without refrigerators because the air itself keeps food frozen. One account notes that, in the markets, there is reportedly no need for refrigerators, and stallholders instead focus on maintaining enough heating just to stay warm, a reversal of the usual energy priorities in milder climates.
Growing up here means internalising those adaptations from childhood. In one video, Dec is mentioned as the time when a young resident named Kuni walks to school at minus 48 and treats it as a typical day, pausing only to show how his scarf and eyelashes have frozen. Another clip, posted in Feb, captures a voice saying “इट्स माइनस 40°. एंड माय हेयर इज फ्रोजन,” inviting viewers to imagine living inside a freezer your whole life and noting that this is reality for 300 thousand people, a figure echoed in the city’s 40 below mornings. These glimpses of daily life, from frozen hair to fogged glasses, show how residents fold extreme conditions into their sense of normal, even as outsiders struggle to imagine stepping outside at those temperatures.
Why people stay in Yakutsk
Given the conditions, the obvious question is why so many people choose to remain. Part of the answer lies in history and identity. Yakutsk is not a remote outpost but a regional capital that anchors political, economic and cultural life for a vast area. It is the administrative centre of Yakutsk and the surrounding republic, a place where Indigenous Sakha culture, Russian governance and resource extraction intersect. The city’s role in servicing nearby mining operations, including diamonds and other minerals, provides jobs and revenue that tie families to the region, even when the thermometer suggests they might be better off elsewhere.
There is also a psychological dimension that residents describe with a mix of pride and pragmatism. Living in what some call The Coldest City on Earth can become a badge of honour, a way of framing hardship as resilience. Earlier this year, one video report framed Yakutsk as the coldest city on Earth where winter temperatures test people daily, yet residents are not just surviving, they are living. That sentiment is echoed in social media posts that show children playing outside in temperatures that would shut down entire regions elsewhere, and in local commentary that treats the cold as a shared challenge that binds the community together.
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