Temperature drops to minus 32C in the world\u2019s second coldest capital city.<\/p>\n
Schools in Astana closed for four days in a row this week as temperatures dropped to minus 32C.<\/p>\n
The cold snap started abruptly, when winds gusting up to 55 kilometres per hour forced the temperature to drop from a mild minus 4C, to a minus 14C. Since then, the temperatures have fallen further.<\/p>\n
Although minus 4C might not sound particularly mild, it is for Astana and is close to the average maximum November temperature of minus 3C.<\/p>\n
However, the temperature can be expected to drop further in the coming months.<\/p>\n
Astana is the second coldest capital city in the world, after Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. In January, Astana’s average maximum temperature was just minus 12.5C.<\/p>\n
Standing alongside Brasilia in Brazil and Canberra in Australia, Astana is a planned capital city.<\/p>\n
It is far colder than Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, whose average maximum in January is a balmy minus 1C.<\/p>\n
The capital was moved in 1997. The chosen site was Akmola, which at this point was a largely empty patch of land on the banks of the Ishim River.<\/p>\n
Akmola was renamed as Astana and the landscape was transformed.<\/p>\n
The city is now littered with futuristic-looking buildings, with pioneering architecture and innovative designs. Little surrounds the city except hundreds of kilometres of flat, empty grassland.<\/p>\n
More than 750,000 people now call Astana their home, despite the harsh climate.<\/p>\n
The aggressive cold is expected to continue across the region over the next few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Temperature drops to minus 32C in the world\u2019s second coldest capital city. Schools in Astana closed for four days in a row this week as temperatures dropped to minus 32C. The cold snap started abruptly, when winds gusting up to 55 kilometres per hour forced the temperature to drop from a mild minus 4C, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30425"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30425"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}