Image: Vostok Station, Antarctica, Todd Sowers, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), Columbia University, Palisades, New York for NOAA.
The German weather site wetteronline.de reported “extreme winter cold” in Antarctica as the mercury plummeted to “almost minus 80 degrees Celsius” on April 29, 2024. “On April 29, almost minus 80 degrees were measured at the Russian Vostok research station. Such extreme cold is rarely reached this early in the year,” reported wetteronline.de. That translates to -112℉.
The reading is unusual, because such low temperatures are usually expected only in the peak of winter in the southern hemisphere.
According to the Wikipedia entry on the station and its record cold: “The lowest natural temperature ever directly recorded at ground level on Earth is −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F; 184.0 K) at the then-Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983 by ground measurements.”
“Values below minus 80 degrees in April are also extremely rare at the Earth’s cold pole and have only been recorded three times in the last 60 years,” wetteronline.de adds.