Hail, fires and tropical storms, with temperature hitting record +35C in world’s coldest city

The hottest day of 2020 was recorded today in Yakutsk, with thermometers touching +35C before a tropical storm hit the capital city of the world's coldest permanently inhabited region. 

More than 80 private houses were damaged in Sunday’s hail storm west of Yakutsk in the Lensky district of the republic, with vegetable gardens around them completely destroyed by hailstones the size of hen eggs. 

‘The hailstorm was brief - only twenty minutes - but so powerful that it pierced through roofs and windows, ruining gardens’, said head of Natora village Natalya Savvinova. 

Hail, fires and tropical storms, with temperature hitting record +35C in world’s coldest city. Pictures: social media 

A high voltage power line was torn down by stormy winds further north in Nyurba district, and hit the ground, killing eleven cows with electric shock. 

The farmer will be compensated for the loss, said the local department of Agriculture.

Other areas of Yakutia, Russia’s largest territory, are in desperate need of rain as wildfires continue to rage in its northern districts. 

52 wildfires are registered north-west, north and north-east of Yakutsk in Mirninsky, Zhigansky and Verkhoyanskiy districts. 

Remote wildfires - like the one below pictured on Sentinel-2 satellite image less than 35km  from Khromskaya Bay of the East Siberian Sea - will not be extinguished because they are too remote for firefighters to reach. 

Two top pictures are of a large wildfire (more than 50km wide) at 64N, 50 km west of the Lena river, and below is the norernmost wildfire of July 2020 south of Khromskaya Bay in the East Siberian Sea (71N, 145E) from Sentinel-2 satellite. Pictures: Antonio Vecoli