Sunny days on decline in Siberia

Yes, in Siberia we have sunny days, too: it is not always snowing. However, in last 30 years the exact number of sunny days was cut by the government by two: from 130 to just 70 per year. The weather institute has published interesting stats for sunny days in Novosibirsk in July in different years:
1987 - 12 sunny days
1989 - 11
1998 - 15
2007 - 10
2008 - 6
2009 - 3
2010 - 2
2011 - 0
Yes, 0 sunny days in July in 2011!

Siberia is leading Russia's vodka consumption

From time to time different agencies try to count who in Russia drinks all the country's vodka. The latest data reveals that Siberian science town Koltsovo (in the Novosibirsk neighborhood) is the #1 place in Russia where most of vodka is sold: 102 liters per person in a year. Standard vodka bottle is 0.5l: this is 204 bottles/year. Of course there are people in Koltsovo who don't drink vodka, so some guys should drink every day to match the stats.

Well, it's worth mentioning that a huge vodka plant was recently built in Koltsovo. I hope the stats counted all manufactured vodka and bulk sales because Koltsovo is a nice and quite town famous for its virus research.

Photo by Vladimir Kkaritonov

Norilsk sets temperature record

Last weekend was the hottest ever in Norilsk:


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If you think it was +10C and everyone was sunbathing and enjoying melted snow, you are wrong. It was real +32C. This is the season of white nights (the sun always stays above the horizon) and it must be really great time in Norilsk.

Norilsk is the northernmost city in the world with more than 100,000 inhabitants and the world's second largest city (after Murmansk) north of the Arctic Circle (wiki).

Discovery channel looks for yeti

The yeti news again. Now the Discovery channel is going to Kemerovo highlands trying to find evidence for the never-seen yeti.

The crew is going to explore the cave where artifacts were found, presumably left by yeti.

You should definitely tune to Discovery in December 2013 - January 2014 when the series go live.

Actual word of mouth is that local citizens put on big feet cut of cardboard and leave footprints for journalists specially.

You decide.

I want to believe.

Cold July

It's almost mid-summer and we are having both very hot and quite chilly days. For example, July 1 was the coldest one for many years: just +13C.

June was not the warmest either. The best sign of such cold summer is that first honeysuckle berries ripened just now, while usually these first berries appear in the farm markets in early June.

Peking-Paris 2013 rally goes through Siberia

Last weekend we were on a trip to Altay and got lucky to meet the Peking-Paris 2013 Motor Challenge. It was the 12th day of the rally, the contestants had crossed the Mongolia-Russia border and were driving through Altay. We were peacefully cooking shashlyk at a small river near the road when some very exceptional vehicles started to pass by.













Weather was perfect: hot and sunny. However, there's still snow in the mountains and nights are quite chilly. And indeed, a lot of stars.

Snowing in Kemerovo

Sunday, June 2, 2013 in Kemerovo started with snow and -2C:

Photo source