“There is a place in the North, in one of the least populated areas on Earth, on the Russian coast of the Barents Sea, where the most remote weather station in the Arctic is located – in the abandoned village of Khodovarikha. It is a small wooden hut, facing the sea, in the middle of a plain of sand and grass that for most of the year is covered by snow. Nobody wants to work there. There are no roads, you can only get there by air or sea. For the past 13 or 14 years, Slava, a Russian meteorologist in his sixties, has lived here alone – systematically recording data on the weather, clouds, temperature, pressure, wind… and communicating only by radio or with an old Morse machine. These are some of his notes:
Cloudiness of 10 points, lower level 0, altocumulus. Moderate snow blowing, visibility 4km. Air temperature -20ºC. Relative humidity 83%. Wind northeast 12mps with gusts up to 14mps, no precipitation. Northern lights mild to moderate intensity, greenish-yellow color.”
We imagined a storm coming in over the Barents Sea, as experienced from Slava’s hut.