I do not know if it officially dipped below -30, but in our area it did. Center of Moscow does not get as cold due to all the buildings and such, but I am here to tell you that were we live, it dropped below -30 C…

Lets translate -30 Celsius to Fahrenheit: -30 c is -22 f = cold… :)

When it gets this cold most cars do not start and if you think about it, starting the cars is bad for them at this temperature. The parking lot is packed with cars today that just would not go. New cars and old cars makes no difference…

Boza and I just finish walking and he got really good at walking on one paw. He looked like a five-gaited horse with only one hoof on the ground at a time. Boza said that being this cold makes it hard to do his business properly. Though I have to say he still buries his head in the snow and sniffs everything, so I guess he is doing okay regardless… (I tell him brain damage with result from too much snow sniffing! He does not listen…)

Snow at this extreme temperature is really strange. It is so powdery and packs into a very hard shell. I guess that is what they mean by snow pack and powder at ski resorts. I don’t know because I have never been skiing in my life. It just makes sense now that I live around such snow…

This was at 11:00 am...

I am going to leave our Volga sitting until the temperature gets around -10 and then I will start her up. I hope the antifreeze is good enough, because even though the Russian antifreeze says good to -49 below zero, I just hope it is true. I would hate a cracked block or something. I suspect though that an old Volga is designed for a life like this and will be okay. I do know – that the master cylinder for the brakes is giving out and a new one needs to be installed soon. Plus I hear the exhaust starting to develop a leak.  With this kind of cold, it all will have to wait…

So a normal day in Russia, the extremes are present as normal and that is what I love about Russia…

Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia!