Long-Lasting Wildfires still Trouble Siberia

Roads are blocked, planes are diverted due to low visibility, schools are shut, and people are advised to stay home in the Urals and Siberia, Russia due to wildfires still ravaging the region.

Smoke from smouldering peat bogs around Yekaterinburg reached the largest city in the Urals on 11 October - and has intensified since, despite the firefighters working to extinguish the fire, according to The Siberian Times. 

The middle of October in Russia is the time when snow starts setting across vast expanses of Siberia, and in the Urals. To have peat fires and wildfires active this late into the autumn makes season 2021 one of the longest in the recorded history.

The first wildfires of this year reported near the Pole of Cold in Oymyakon, Yakutia, in late April.