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Russia is located in the temperate belt and most of the country lies within the same latitudes as Canada and Alaska. Russia's climate is predominantly continental, though European Russia is more maritime-continental under the influence of the Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea. North to south, Russia spans a range of climatic zones form arctic to subtropical. Moving eastward across the Ural Mountains into Siberia, the climate becomes purely continental. Russian climate varies from the southern steppes, to forests, forest-steppes, and semi-deserts, to subarctic in Siberia, to Arctic and forest tundra in the polar north, to permafrost in the northern areas of the Far East.
Eastern Siberia's climate is severely continental, and its climatic conditions affect the weather across virtually all East Asia. Northeast Siberia is one of the coldest regions in the world. Temperatures as low as -70°C (-90°F) have been recorded in the uplands around the city of Verkoyansk. In the southern areas of the Far East, including the Maritime Territory and provinces bordering the East Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, a monsoonal climate influenced by the Pacific Ocean results in moderately warm and wet summers. Winters in this region are cold and relatively dry with little snow.
Average temperatures across so vast a landscape as Russia are meaningless, but average annual temperatures at select locations provide some basis for understanding the country's climatic variations. The northwest Russian seaport of Archangel averages 1°C (34°F). Further south, at Moscow, the average temperature is 4°C (40°F). Sochi, located beneath the Caucasus Mountains on the shore of the Black Sea has an average temperature of 13°C (57°F). In Irkutsk, located near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, the annual average temperature is 0°C (31°F). Further north, in central Siberia, the average for Yakutsk is -9°C (15°F). The city of Tiksi on the Bay of Buorkhaya on Siberia's north averages a chilly -12°C (9°F). Finally, the seaport of Vladivostok has an average temperature of 5°C (41°F).
Rainfall across Russia is generally moderate to light, with the heaviest precipitation coming during the summer months. Some regions receive as little as 150 mm (5.9 in) of precipitation per year. The highest rainfall occurs in the westerly mountain regions which average up to 2,000 mm (79 in) of precipitation each year. Rainfall across the East European Plain averages between 600 and 700 mm (24 to 27.5 in) and up to 1,000 mm (39 in) in the southern areas of the Far East.
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