If a little cold air and snow sound like the perfect boost for your holiday spirit, NASA has discovered the ideal destination for a truly frigid Christmas or New Year’s celebration.
“Looking for the coldest place to spend the holiday season?” the agency asked in a Facebook post.
According to NASA, “the coldest place we’ve found on Earth (with the help of NASA Earth satellites) is a high ridge on the East Antarctic Plateau.”
Of course, visitors should plan to bundle up. Temperatures on this icy ridge can plummet to a staggering 135 degrees Fahrenheit below zero during winter nights. At such extremes, even gasoline freezes solid.
NASA first reported identifying Earth’s coldest location in 2013, and the plateau has continued to hold the title ever since.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center reached the conclusion after analyzing 32 years of satellite data. The hollows on the plateau, in particular, are considered the coldest places recorded.
“Near a high ridge that runs from Dome Argus to Dome Fuji, the scientists found clusters of pockets that have plummeted to record low temperatures dozens of times,” officials noted. “The lowest temperature the satellites detected was minus 136°F (minus 93.2°C), on August 10, 2010.”
Researchers attribute these extreme conditions to pockets of air that remain stationary for long periods, allowing heat to radiate continuously into space.
However, the plateau is not the coldest permanently inhabited location on Earth. That distinction belongs to northeastern Siberia, where the towns of Verkhoyansk (in 1892) and Oimekon (in 1933) recorded bone-chilling lows of minus 90°F (minus 67.8°C).
