Siberia — the land of black snow, blood rain and spontaneous solar eclipses — may have just set a dire new climate record. On Saturday (June 20), temperatures in the far-north town of Verkhoyansk broke 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) for the first time, according to news reports.
If verified, that makes Saturday's high the hottest-ever temperature documented above the Arctic Circle, The Washington Post reported.
Verkhoyansk is a town of some 1,300 residents in the Siberian Arctic, about 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) east of Moscow. The town has one of the most extreme temperature ranges on Earth, with winter lows hitting an average of minus 56 F (minus 49 C) and a previous all-time summer high of 98.96 F (37.2 C), according to Brittanica.com. On Saturday, several weather stations reported a new high of 100.4 F — the town's all-time hottest temperature since record keeping began in 1885. On Sunday, June 21, the town also reported a high of 95.3 (35.2 C), showing the previous day's heat was not a blip.
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That sweltering new high (which is still being verified) arrives on the heels of Siberia's hottest May on record, with average temperatures soaring roughly 18 F (10 C) higher than the May average from 1979 to 2019, according to a special report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
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Originally published on Live Science.
