Overview
- Moscow’s overnight low reached −12.8°C at the VDNH station, with suburbs as cold as −26.2°C, and forecasters expect a bounce to roughly −6 to −9°C in the capital through Epiphany night.
- Forecasters report severe cold across Siberia, with common lows of −35 to −40°C and local minima to −54°C in parts of Irkutsk Oblast, where anomalous cold is expected to persist into January 19.
- Irkutsk authorities deployed about 900 personnel from emergency services, police, medical teams and the military, activated roadside heating points, and plan 75 Epiphany water sites under strict safety measures.
- Hydrometcenter guidance had flagged the night of January 18 as potentially one of the season’s coldest for the Moscow region, but Phobos meteorologists now say the peak of the cold wave there has passed.
- Experts attribute Russia’s pronounced warming and rise in extremes to fossil-fuel combustion, with at least another 2.5°C of warming projected by 2076 and this month’s Mediterranean-born blizzard and current cold snap cited as examples of volatile swings.