​In the most “polar” small town in China, one of the few with a subarctic climate in this country, a few days ago it was -53 C, the lowest temperature measured in the most densely populated country on the globe. Why is it so cold in Mohe? How long does winter last? Why do tourists go there?

Mohe is the northernmost city in China, it is located on the Amur River, south of Russian Siberia, and the northernmost village in it is called “Beiji”, which is sometimes translated as “northernmost” and also “North Pole”. “. The length of the city of Mohe from north to south is 150 km and the total area is 20,000 km2. With only 80,000 inhabitants, the city has an extremely low population density of 4 inhabitants/km2.

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The city is located in China’s Heilongjiang province and has about eight months of winter, which helps the city to be a tourist center, with ski slopes as well as winter amusement parks with large ice sculptures and structures.

Mohe had three days with temperatures below -50C, and vloggers from all over China came to conduct all kinds of experiments with hot water and other liquids that freeze instantly at such temperatures, in the style of experiments carried out by Siberians at the “poles”. cold: the cities of Oimiyakon and Verkhoyansk.

In 2011, you could see the northern lights on Mohe, and in December 2019, a modern road connecting the small town with the capital Beijing was opened.

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The extreme cold brought temperatures of -62C to Siberia and was also felt in China, where temperatures fell below -40C in much of the north of the country.

It was -53C on Mohe on Sunday, surpassing the lowest temperature of -52.3C recorded in 1969. This is the lowest temperature recorded in China in half a century. In December 2009, a district in Inner Mongolia, Henghe, recorded -58 C, but the value is controversial.

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China is such a large country that spans so many climate zones that in the morning it was -53°C in Mohe and 76° higher in the far south. On the coldest day in Mohe, the midday temperature was only -37 degrees.

The weather station is at an altitude of 433 m, the warmest year in the last 40 years was 2020 with an average temperature of -1.3 C, and the coldest was 1987 with an average temperature of -5.4 C. In July it can be over + 35 C, with an absolute maximum , close to +40 C. Also in July there can be nights when the minimum temperature drops below 2 degrees, but also in other places the temperature is +20 C. Few in the world have such extreme climatic conditions.

In January, the maximum temperatures average -22 -20 C, and the minimum – about -39, -37 C. Only -5 C.

Another 12 weather stations in the Heilongjiang region set absolute cold records with values ​​from -51 to -48 degrees.

Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. In 2022, China experienced its hottest summer in 60 years, and there were places where it rained so much that the event was classified as a once-in-a-hundred-years event.

Sources: BBC, Washington Post, Wikipedia, Independent, CNN, China Daily, weather platform WeatherOnline.co.uk

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