The climate of Siberia varies dramatically. On the north coast, north of the Arctic Circle, there is a very short (about one-month-long) summer.

Almost all the population lives in the south, along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate here is subarctic (Koppen Dfc or Dwc), with the annual average temperature about 0 °C (32 °F) and roughly ?15 °C (5 °F) average in January and +20 °C (68 °F) in July. With a reliable growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile chernozem soils, Southern Siberia is good enough for profitable agriculture, as was proven in the early twentieth century.

The southwesterly winds of Southern Siberia bring warm air from Central Asia and the Middle East. The climate in West Siberia (Omsk, Novosibirsk) is several degrees warmer than in the East (Irkutsk, Chita). With a lowest record temperature of ?71.2 °C (?96.2 °F), Oymyakon (Sakha Republic) has the distinction of being the coldest town on Earth. But summer temperatures in other regions reach 38 °C (100.4 °F). In general, Sakha is the coldest Siberian region, and the basin of the Yana River has the lowest temperatures of all, with permafrost reaching 1,493 meters (4,898 ft). Nevertheless, as far as Imperial Russian plans of settlement were concerned, cold was never viewed as an issue. In the winter, southern Siberia sits near the center of the semi-permanent Siberian High, so winds are usually light in the winter.

Precipitation in Siberia is generally low, exceeding 500 millimeters (20 in) only in Kamchatka where moist winds flow from the Sea of Okhotsk onto high mountains – producing the region’s only major glaciers – and in most of Primorye in the extreme south where monsoonal influences can produce quite heavy summer rainfall. Despite the region’s notorious cold winters, snowfall is generally quite light, especially in the eastern interior of the region.

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