Featured Image Credit: 60 Minutes Australia
Topics: Weather
Callum Jones
For the past week and a bit, the hot topic of conversation in the UK has been the Baltic weather outside.
Some parts of the country have experienced temperatures as low as -15C, making it colder than Iceland.
The Met Office has issued warnings for ice and snow across large parts of the UK in the last week, and let's not forget those videos of the treacherous conditions on the M25.
Advert
To put it simply, the UK crumbles when the freezing conditions come along.
But imagine if our winters were on average 60C colder than they currently are.
Well, for this one village in Central Siberia, that is a reality.
Welcome to Oymyakon, a Russian village located in the Yana-Oymyakon Highlands, where an astonishing -55C in winter is seen as a good day.
The Australian TV show 60 Minutes Australia did a deep dive on the village in 2018, and one surprising moment has people talking.
Advert
In this one clip, geographer Nick Middleton and the 60 News Australia reporter Liam Bartlett decide to do some experimenting in the extreme conditions.
Nick comes out of the house extremely wrapped up with a saucepan of boiling hot water.
He explains to the reporter that the water had just come off the stove, showing the steam rising off it.
.png)
Nick then throws the water up in the air and because of the freezing temperatures, it instantly freezes.
Advert
The programme then included some further shots of the boiling water being launched in the air, with both men quite amazed by it.
So what is the actual science behind the boiling water evaporating as soon as it hits the freezing air?
Well, cold air is very dense - making its capacity to hold water vapour molecules very low.
So when the reporter threw the boiling water into the ice-cold air, the smallest droplets are able to cool and evaporate into that astonishing cloud we see in the video.
.png)
Advert
Shockingly, it has got a lot colder than in the documentary done by 60 Minutes Australia, where they reference it to be around -50C during their stay.
But in 1924, the village recorded its lowest temperature ever of -71C - that certainly puts the weather in the UK as a trip to the Maldives.
However, it does warm up in Oymyakon in the summer, with a record high of 34C recorded in July 2010.