4 amazing facts about Siberia you didn’t know about
As you all must be aware, now more than ever, the climate change has been wreaking havoc worldwide. While countries like Italy and UK have been experiencing the warmest years on record, places like Siberia in Russia are witnessing the worst cold waves in history. For instance, recently, Yakutsk, a city in eastern Siberia experienced minus 50°C, lowest recorded temperature in a century. As a result, climate experts have been concerned about Siberia and rightly so. They apprehend that most parts of Siberia will perish within the next few years if such cold waves continue to bite.
That made us wonder, if Siberia were to really disappear from the face of the earth, what all we would be missing. Here’s a list of a few of them.
The world’s deepest lake
If there’s a quizzer among you who keep track of all the superlatives in the world, you would know that Siberia is home to the world’s deepest lake, aka, Lake Baikal with a whooping depth of 5387 feet. Apart from being the deepest lake, this lake is also the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world. In fact, it contains more than 20 per cent of world’s overall fresh surface water. As many as 330 rivers flow into this lake that is known to freeze entirely during the winter with ice as thick as 2 metres in places. This ancient mountainous lake is also often called the Baikal Sea due to its massive size of 31772 square kilometres that only keeps increasing due to tectonic activity underneath. It is also home to one of the longest and coldest hiking trails in the world called Great Baikal Trail.
The world’s longest railway line
Here’s another interesting fact about Siberia: It is also the abode of the world’s longest railway line called Trans-Siberian Railway Network. It connects Moscow in European Russia to Vladivostok in Russian Far East (Asia) and is 5772 miles long. The breath-taking journey here lasts 6 nights and 7 days, crossing eight time zones including Lake Baikal and the Ural Mountains. Despite being the longest railway line, it only has two tracks and has been operational since 1904.
The unique diamond dust
As we all know, Siberia is famous for its harsh climate and is even cold during summers. That reminds us, Siberia experiences a special type of snowfall called diamond dust. Here, the snow is made up of very sleek, needle shaped icicles and the cloud is on the ground-level. Also known as clear sky precipitation or simple ice crystals, diamond dust was responsible for earning Siberia a place in the Guinness Book of World Records when it won the title of largest snowflake ever found in 1971. It was 12 inches in diameter and was traced in the Siberian city of Bratsk.
The world’s largest plain
That’s right. Siberia is also home to the world’s largest plain called West Siberian Plain. It ranges from Ural Mountains in the west to Yenisei River in the east and Altay Mountains on the southeast. It covers a whopping area of 2.7 million square kilometres. This plain is one of the largest petroleum and natural gas reserves on the planet.