(sakhalife.ru photo via AP)

MOSCOW (AP) — Even thermometers can’t keep up with the plunging temperatures in Russia’s remote Yakutia region, which hit minus 67 degrees Celsius (minus 88.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas Tuesday. In Yakutia — about 3,300 miles (5,300 kilometers) east of Moscow — where students routinely go to school in minus 40 degrees, school was canceled throughout the region. In Yakutia, a region of 1 million people about 5,300 kilometres east of Moscow, students routinely go to school even in -40 C. But school was cancelled Tuesday throughout the region and police ordered parents to keep their children inside. In the village of Oymyakon, one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth, state-owned Russian television showed the mercury falling to the bottom of a thermometer that was set up to measure down only to -50 C. In 2013, Oymyakon recorded an all-time low of -71 C.

Over the weekend, two men froze to death when they tried to walk to a nearby farm after their car broke down. The village of Oymyakon, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, recorded an all-time low of -71 degrees in 2013. Residents of Yakutia, home to nearly 1 million people, are no strangers to cold weather, and this week's cold spell was not even dominating headlines in local media on Tuesday.
Temperatures reach −67 °C (−89 °F) in Russia's Yakutia region, four degrees shy of the record low of −71 °C (−96 °F) recorded in 2013 in Yakutia's village of Oymyakon.