Wunderground.com - 1/14/13, Christopher C. Burt
Ace temperature detective and climatologist Maximiliano Herrera may have discovered a remote place in Kazakhstan that has one of the most extreme climates in the world. This is a guest blog courtesy of Max.
Orlovka, Kazakhstan
A new potential cold pole has been discovered, it's a remote and almost universally unknown village called Orlovka, located in the extreme eastern part of Kazakhstan near the border of Mongolia. Orlovka is sandwiched between mountains in a deep valley at 1,100 m (3,600‘) elevation.
A couple of map images showing the location of Orlovka. The top map shows the overview with Russia to the north and Mongolia and China to the east. The bottom map shows the terrain surrounding Orlovka.
Orlovka currently has a population of only 25 and is so remote that there is no postal or telegraph service, nor shops or hospitals. Even the vast majority of Kazakhs have never heard about it. Nevertheless, Orlovka hosts a meteorological station with one observer in charge of the instruments. Apparently, Orlovka’s meteorological station has been operating since 1908 with very few gaps in its POR. There was an incident in 1919 when the local observer was arrested and taken to a jail in Katon Karagai, but promptly released after being indentified by the local police chief as the observer of the Orlovka meteorological station. The weather data of Orlovka has never been digitalized (to my knowledge) and the Russian Meteorological Institute, Pogoda (which has a database of thousands of former Soviet meteorological stations), does not have a complete data series for Orlovka. Apparently, the only complete data set for the site is that which rests in a small archive in the remote mountainous village itself. The local observer communicates with the national Institute of Meteorology of Kazakhstan (Kazhydromet) and provides them regularly with data. How has this mysterious village come to our attention just recently?
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