Record lows freeze Siberia

And you think it’s cold here?

This week temperatures plummeted in Russia’s central and far eastern regions. In the Kemerova district, a 30-year record was broken when the thermometer showed -57 C.

The frigid cold snap has been straining power plants, while in some apartment buildings residents aren’t using the elevators over fears their system’s hydraulic oil may be congealed.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern hemisphere — not counting windchill — was -70 C, at Omyakon, Siberia.

But the coldest place on Earth is the Vostok research base in Antarctica, where in 1983 the temperature bottomed out at – 89.2 C.