The town is use to temperature plunging well below 0 with children routinely going to school in temperature of -40.
Amazingly, 88 below isn’t even the record low temperature for the town. But at -88 the cold snap has turned deadly.
Over the weekend, two men froze to death when they tried to walk to a nearby farm after their car broke down. Two other men in the group, who were wearing warmer clothing, survived.
The all time record for coldest temperature recorded for a permanently inhabited settlement anywhere in the world is held by Oymyako at a brisk 89.9 degrees below. But unofficial temperatures as cold as minus 108 degrees have been measured in Oymyakon.
As for the all-time world record cold temperature, Vostok research station on Antarctica had an official reading of 128.6 below zero in 1983.