Living with snow in Yakutsk

Yakutsk is a city in Russia, far to the north and east.

It sits beside a long river called the Lena. In winter, snow and ice are everywhere. The air is very, very cold.

Yakutsk is the capital of the Sakha Republic, also called Yakutia, in far northeastern Russia. It stands on the Lena River, a long river that flows north to the Arctic Ocean, and it is about 5,000 km from Moscow.

More than 300,000 people lived there in 2023. Yakutsk is a river port and a mining city, and it has a university. In this topic we find out how people in Yakutsk dress, travel, go to school and build homes in one of the coldest cities on Earth.

Yakutsk is the capital of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in northeastern Russia, on the Lena River. A fort was founded on the Lena's low right bank in 1632 and moved about 70 km upstream to the present site in 1642. Long a small provincial center of wooden houses, the city has grown light industries, modern housing and paved streets; it remains an administrative center and river port, with a university founded in 1956.

Its economy relies heavily on minerals, including diamond mining, according to the European Space Agency. Smithsonian reported more than 300,000 residents in 2023. The Lena runs more than 4,400 km from the Baikal Mountains to the Laptev Sea, flowing north past the city in braided channels. This topic draws on ESA, NSIDC, Britannica, Smithsonian, an AFP report and Russian sources on school rules and the new Lena bridge.

In winter, Yakutsk can be colder than minus 35 degrees, even in the middle of the day.

A thick, icy fog can hang over the streets. But in summer, the days can be warm.

The European Space Agency describes Yakutsk as one of the coldest cities in the world. In January, the average daily high is about -35°C. In July, though, the average daily temperature is about 20°C, so the difference between summer and winter is huge.

In January 2023, the temperature in Yakutsk dropped to about -62.7°C (-80.9°F), the coldest there in more than two decades. In winter the city is often wrapped in ice fog, a thick mist that forms in the very cold air.

ESA gives average January highs of about -35°C and average July daily temperatures of about 20°C. Smithsonian reported in January 2023 that residents regularly face around -40°F (-40°C) in winter, and that a reading of -80.9°F (about -62.7°C) that month was the city's coldest in more than two decades, citing CNN.

The city is warming. Scientists at Yakutsk's Melnikov Permafrost Institute told AFP in 2018 that average temperatures in the city had risen by 2.5°C over the previous decade, and residents said that spells of -55°C, which once closed schools for weeks, had become rare. Smithsonian describes a city often shrouded in ice fog. The US National Weather Service defines ice fog as fog made of tiny ice particles that forms at very low temperatures; it is rare above -30°C and almost always present at -45°C near a source of water vapor, such as smoke and exhaust from heating and engines.

People in Yakutsk wear lots of layers.

They put on hats, scarves and big mittens. One market seller says, dress "in layers, like a cabbage!" Then they can go out in the snow.

In winter, people in Yakutsk start the day by putting on layer after layer: several hats, scarves and mittens. The air can be cold enough to make bare skin go numb, which can lead to frostbite, so covering up matters.

The cold affects everything. Some drivers keep their car engines running all night, because a stopped engine could freeze. At an outdoor market, one seller keeps frozen fish on her stall with no freezer at all, because the air outside does the job.

Smithsonian's 2023 account describes winter mornings of layering hats, scarves and mittens and checking a car left running overnight, since turning it off could let the engine freeze. Exposed skin can go numb quickly, and unnoticed numbness can lead to frostbite.

Residents describe adapting rather than fighting the cold. One told Reuters that you either adjust and dress accordingly or you suffer; a fish seller at an outdoor market, who needs no freezer, advised dressing "in layers, like a cabbage." The same cold that challenges people is also useful: near the settlement of Oy, about 65 km (40 miles) south of Yakutsk, villagers harvest ice from a local lake.

Under Yakutsk, the ground is frozen all year.

If a warm house sat right on it, the ground could melt and the house could tip. So many buildings stand on tall legs, called stilts. Cold air blows underneath.

Yakutsk is built on permafrost, ground that stays frozen for at least two years in a row. Here it is frozen all year round, though the top layer thaws a little each summer.

Frozen ground is hard, but if it melts, the soil can sink, taking roads and buildings with it. So most of the city's Soviet-era apartment blocks stand on stilts. Air flows under them, so the warm buildings do not melt the permafrost. Roads in the region are often made of clay instead of asphalt, so they do not crack as the ground freezes and thaws.

NSIDC defines permafrost as soil, sediment or rock that stays at or below 0°C for at least two years, from less than a meter to more than 1,500 m thick; the top part that thaws and refreezes each year is the active layer. Permafrost underlies about a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere's exposed land, around 65 percent of it in Eurasia. ESA notes that Sakha is covered by permafrost and Smithsonian that Yakutsk sits on continuous permafrost.

AFP reported in 2018 that most Soviet-era apartment blocks in Yakutsk are concrete-panel buildings on stilts, raised to ventilate their undersides so they do not heat the frozen soil, which is stable only while it stays frozen. In the 1960s, stilts were typically driven 6 m into the permafrost, which one local builder said is no longer enough as the surface warms. ESA adds that roads in Sakha are often clay rather than asphalt, to avoid cracking with freeze and thaw, though summer rains can turn them to mud.

On very cold mornings, young children in Yakutsk may stay home.

They do their schoolwork at home instead. Older children stay home only when it is even colder.

Yakutsk has clear rules for very cold school days. The decision is made using the weather at 6:30 a.m. In 2026, children in grades 1 to 5 stay home and learn remotely when it is -45°C with no wind, or a little warmer if it is windy. Pupils up to grade 8 stay home at -48°C, and all grades at -50°C.

On 12 January 2026, it was -48°C, and children in grades 1 to 8 had a cold day. Pupils who come to school anyway still get their lessons and are looked after.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported the rules in January 2026, citing the city education department's website. In all Yakutsk schools, a cold day (aktirovanny den) is declared on the basis of the 6:30 a.m. weather and holds for the whole day, whatever the shift. Grades 1 to 5 stay home at -45°C in calm air, -44°C with a 1 m/s wind, -43°C at 2 m/s and -42°C at 3 to 5 m/s; pupils up to grade 8 stay home at -48°C in calm weather, adjusted for wind in the same way; and all grades study at home at -50°C.

Children study remotely, with parents in touch with the class teacher, and any child who comes to school gets lessons as timetabled and supervision. Parents may also keep a child home in cold weather without an official cold day, by agreement with the teacher. Each district of Yakutia sets its own rules. Outside the capital, children keep going to school in colder weather (in the Oymyakon district, grades 1 to 5 stay home at -50°C or below), because Yakutsk has dense fogs and heavy traffic.

The Lena River is very long.

Boats stop at Yakutsk's port. Builders are now making a giant bridge across the river. It should be finished in a few years.

Yakutsk is a major river port on the Lena, which flows north in many braided channels to the Arctic Ocean.

A new bridge across the Lena at Yakutsk is being built. In 2024, the engineers checking the work said it should be finished by the end of 2028. The bridge and its approach roads will be 14.5 km long. Russia's road researchers say it will be the first bridge in Yakutia to join two major federal highways, the Lena and the Kolyma.

Yakutsk is a major port on the Lena, which ESA describes as a braided river over 4,400 km long; ports line its banks.

The Russian Road Scientific Research Institute (ROSDORNII), contracted to supervise construction, describes the Lena bridge as one of Russia's largest transport projects and the first bridge in Yakutia to link the Lena and Kolyma federal roads with the Vilyuy highway, and so the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur main lines with the Northern Sea Route. The bridge and approaches will total 14.5 km; in October 2024 construction was expected to finish before the end of 2028, and the institute says it will raise transport accessibility for Yakutia's population from 22.2 to 87 percent.