As the U.S. suffers through snow storm after snow storm and a relentless chill, residents in Yakutia, Russia are posting selfies with their eyelashes literally frozen on their faces.
Yakutia is an area about 3,300 miles east of Moscow, with a population of one million people. It’s usually a quiet place that stays out of the headlines, but their current cold snap puts the rest of the world’s winter to shame, and their selfies are drawing a lot of attention.
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The temperature hit -67 degrees Celcius on Tuesday, which translates to about -88.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Normally, children make it to school even in -40 degree weather, but on Tuesday police ordered residents to keep their kids inside.
Those that did step out were in for a frosty sight — eyelashes gathered thick layers of ice and snow in the frigid temps, and people couldn’t resist taking selfies.
Social media blew up, with dozens of Jack Frost-looking self portraits blinking their pure white lashes at the camera. Ice can be seen clinging to people’s eyebrows, beards, mustaches, and skin — wherever it can get purchase in the Russian tundra.
Though the cold is a source of concern and public health for some, there are those that can’t resist a good cold-weather stunt. The frozen-eyelash selfies were picked up on news sites around the globe, prompting some to wonder if it would be the next big fashion trend. Local site YakutiaMedia even posted pictures of a student who took their clothes off and jumped into a thermal spring.
For locals, this isn’t even the coldest weather in recent memory. In 2013, the village of Oymyakon recorded a record low temperature of -98 degrees Fahrenheit. The village is considered the coldest inhabited place on earth. Houses there are required to have central heating and back up generators in case of an emergency.
The cold didn’t even dominate headlines on the local news on Tuesday. Yakutian meteorologists genially noted that the mercury in their thermometers had bottomed out at -50 degrees Celcius, unable to measure any lower, and then moved on to other stories.
