6 Coldest Place on Earth with Snow and Ice Covered All Year Round

There are places in earth little known for their extreme cold, and are barely survivable for humans. If you are planning a visit, grab a blanket and get ready to hunker down – they hold the record for the coldest temperatures ever recorded. And once your skin are exposed outside, it will get freeze within a few minutes, and the droplets from your each exhale will turn into crystals. Keep reading to discover the most bone-chilling places on the planet.

1. Denali, Alaska

Alaska is located at the northwestern tip of the North American continent. The Prospect River in Alaska, USA, is also called Prospect Creek. Due to the influence of ocean currents, arctic anticyclones, and topography, the winter in the Prospect River area is cold and the weather is harsh, so there are fewer people living here. The highest mountain peak in Alaska is a spectacular, imposing sight, towering more than 6,000m above sea level. It’s also a climber’s paradise. A weather station placed close to the summit recorded the coldest temperature is a frosty -73.8°C. Once known as Mount McKinley, the US government reverted its official name to Denali – the name used by the Koyukon people, who inhabit the area around the mountain.

2. Oymyakon

Oymyakon is located in the Sakha Republic, 800 kilometers east of the capital Yakutsk, with an area of 422 km2, the upper reaches of the Indigirka River, one of the "cold poles" in the northern hemisphere. Oymyakon is one of the coldest permanent settlements in the world, with 500 villagers living here all year round. In mid-January 2018, Oymyakon Village recorded an extremely cold weather of -67°C, which almost equaled the record of -67.7°C measured in February 1933. On January 26, 1926, the lowest temperature that people have ever measured in the Oymyakon region of Siberia.

3. North Ice, Greenland

Established by the British North Greeland Expedition in 1950s, this research station was originally reached on dog sleds before military aircraft dropped supplies and instruments for a team of explorers and scientists to use. The temperature reading taken in 1954 was, at the time, plunged to -66.1°C - the coldest ever recorded in the northern hemisphere. The expedition carried out broad research that included geology, seismology, physiology and glaciology.

4. Yakutsk, Russia

Yakutsk is one of the coldest cities on Earth and located on permafrost. Yakutsk is the capital of the Russian Sakha Republic. It was built in 1632 and is very close to the Arctic Ocean. It is the scientific, cultural and economic center of the Sakha Republic. Since Yakutsk is built on permafrost, it is known as the "Ice City". Yakutsk has a continental climate with severe cold and long winters. The average temperature in January is -38.6°C and the extreme minimum temperature is minus 64.4°C. Summer is short and warm. The average temperature in July is 19.5°C, the extreme maximum temperature is 38.4°C, and the absolute temperature difference exceeds 100°C.

5. Yukon Territory, Canada

Snag is a now-abandoned village where a record low temperature was recorded during an unusual winter in the 1940s. Snag lies in a bowl-shaped valley in Yukon, Canada. The extreme cold caused locals to report their breath freezing mid-air as they exhaled and falling to the ground as a white dust. Stranger still, they found that sounds carried much further in the cold dense air, with voices being heard several miles from their source.

6. Genhe, China

Genhe City is a county-level city in Hulunbuir City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It is the coldest city in China and is known as the "China Cold Pole". It is characterized by cold and humid, long winter and short summer, spring and autumn connected, and the average frost-free period is 90 days. The annual average temperature is -5.3°C, the average temperature in January is close to -30°C, the extreme minimum temperature recorded by the county-level meteorological station is -51.5°С, the extreme low temperature recorded by the weather station is -58°C, and the average temperature in July is 18-20°C.