South Pole
In midsummer, as the sun reaches its maximum elevation of about 23.5 degrees, high temperatures at the South Pole in January average at . As the six-month "day" wears on and the sun gets lower, temperatures drop as well: they reach around sunset (late March) and sunrise (late September). In midwinter, the average temperature remains steady at around . The highest temperature ever recorded at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station was on Christmas Day, 2011, and the lowest was on June 23, 1982 (for comparison, the lowest temperature directly recorded anywhere on earth was at Vostok Station on July 21, 1983, though was measured indirectly by satellite in East Antarctica between Dome A and Dome F in August 2010). Mean annual temperature at the South Pole is -49.3 °C (-56.7 °F).
Oymyakon
There is a monument built around the town square commemorating a reading in the 1920s of −71.2. This was shown on the Australian program "60 Minutes" in a 2012 documentary. On February 6, 1933, a temperature of was recorded at Oymyakon's weather station. This was the coldest officially recorded temperature in the Northern Hemisphere. Only Antarctica has recorded lower official temperatures (the lowest being , recorded at Vostok Station on 21 July 1983).