If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you may currently be experiencing cold winter temperatures. But, can you imagine living in a city where the average temperature is -58℉, and it’s night for 21 hours a day? Well the residents of Oymyakon, Siberia do just that!

The town was named after the Oymyakon River and is now known as the world’s coldest permanently inhabited place, with five hundred permanent residents. It is built on permafrost, which means the ground is permanently frozen. During World War 2, an airfield was built over a patch of land to send American aircrafts to the Eastern front of the war, and which later became a settlement. 

The temperature extremes create nights that can be as long as 21 hours in winter, or as short as three hours in summer! Record temperatures include a low of -89.9℉ and a high of 94.3℉. However, average temperatures range from -7.8℉ to 16.2℉. Overall, it is very dry there, even though the temperature is usually below freezing.

Due to the cold, the 500 residents of Oymyakon have developed unusual methods of survival. People tend to use outhouses for bathrooms as indoor plumbing often freezes, and they have to keep cars either in a heated garage or running all the time. For the most part, people tend to stay indoors, only leaving their homes when they need to, since frostbite is extremely common. Since nothing can grow in the permafrost, their diet consists of reindeer meat, frozen horse blood, and raw fish!