Kolyma River

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Context

In an unusual incident, a Polar Airlines flight found itself making an inadvertent touchdown on the icy expanse of the Kolyma River in Russia's Far East.

About

• Location: Rising in the Kolyma Mountains, the river flows across north eastern Siberia in far eastern Russia.
• With a length of 2,129 km, it absorbs 647,000 square km.
• Course: It passes through numerous rapids and small gorges in its upper course.
• One of Siberia's longest mountain ranges, the magnificent Verkhoyansk Range, is traversed by the Kolyma River.
• Its valley gradually opens up, flowing into the broad, level, marshy Kolyma Lowland until emptying into the marginal East Siberian Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean) in the northeast.
• It is the biggest river system with permanent permafrost underneath.
• The river is frozen to several metres below the surface for almost eight months of the year, from late September to early June.
• Summer rainfall and spring melt are its main sources of nutrition.
• There are very few people living in the basin, which is entirely covered in tundra or thin, stunted woodland.
• The river is one of the six biggest rivers that empty into the Arctic Ocean, with a mean annual discharge of roughly 136 cubic kilometres of water.