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[NASA] A Siberian Snowman in Billings

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  3. A Siberian Snowman in Billings
 
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June 16, 2025

Icons of winter are sometimes found in unexpected places. In one striking example, a series of oval lagoons in a remote part of Siberia forms the shape of a towering snowman when viewed from above.

This image, centered on the remote village of Billings and nearby Cape Billings on Russia’s Chukchi Peninsula, was captured by the

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(Operational Land Imager) aboard
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on June 16, 2025. Established in the 1930s as a port and supply point for the Soviet Union, the village sits on a narrow sandspit that separates the Arctic Ocean from a series of connected coastal inshore lagoons.

The elongated, oval lagoons are frozen over and flanked by

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. Though June is one of the warmest months in Billings, ice cover is routine even then. Mean daily minimum temperatures are just minus 0.6 degrees Celsius (30.9 degrees Fahrenheit) in June, according to
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.   

Though the shape may seem engineered, it is natural and the product of geological processes common in the far north. The ground in this part of Siberia is frozen most of the year and pockmarked with spear-shaped

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buried under the surface. Summer melting causes overlying soil to slump, leaving shallow depressions that fill with meltwater and form
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. Once created, consistency in the direction of the winds and waves likely aligned and elongated the lakes into the shapes seen in the image. The thin ridges separating the lakes may represent the edges of different ice wedges below the surface.

The first reference to humans building snowmen dates back to the Middle Ages, according to the book

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. While three spherical segments are the most common form, other variants dominate in certain areas.
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, snowmen typically have just two segments and are rarely given arms. This five-segmented snowman-shaped series of lakes spans about 22 kilometers (14 miles) from top to bottom, making it roughly 600 times longer than the actual snowwoman that held the Guinness record for being the world’s
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in 2025.

Snowmen are not the only winter icons tied to this remote landscape. For early expeditions to the Russian Arctic, reindeer offered one of the most reliable modes of transportation. That includes expeditions by the town’s namesake,

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, a British-born naval officer who enlisted in the Russian navy and led a surveying expedition to find a
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between 1790 and 1794.

Although the hundred-plus members of the expedition did not reach Cape Billings, they explored much of the

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, producing some of the first accurate maps and further confirming that Asia and North America were separated by a strait. In the winter months, when their ships were beset by ice, the explorers moved to temporary camps on land and instead surveyed the region with reindeer-drawn wooden sleds, according to
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. Winters, in fact, offered the best conditions for exploration because the peninsula’s many rivers and lakes turned into solid surfaces that were easy to traverse in comparison to the muddy bogs that open up in the summer.

Indigenous

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living on the peninsula at the time routinely used reindeer to haul both people and cargo. A pair of reindeer can comfortably haul
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for several hours a day. In addition to their impressive endurance in cold temperatures, reindeer largely feed themselves by digging through snow and grazing on
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, something that neither sled dogs nor horses can do.

Historical documents indicate that the Billings expedition enlisted Chukchi people to manage and care for the reindeer they used, with some accounts suggesting that the explorers used dozens of reindeer at times. While reindeer were mainly used to haul sleds, Chukchi people likely rode them as well.

Non-Chukchi members of the expedition reportedly experimented with riding reindeer, though their experiments did not always go smoothly. Billings’ secretary and translator

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reported using a saddle without stirrups or a bridle and falling “nearly 20 times” after about three hours of travel in his
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. Not only that, he added, but the saddle “at first, causes astonishing pain to the thighs.”

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the

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. Story by Adam Voiland.

References & Resources

  • Alekseev, A.I. (1966)
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    . The Geographical Journal, 132(2), 233-238.
  • Arctic Portal
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    . Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Astronomy (2019, January 2)
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    . Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Chlenov, M. (2006)
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    . Alaska Journal of Anthropology, 4(1-2), 74-91.
  • Dokuchaev, A., et al. (2022)
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    . Arctic and North, 48, 179-208.
  • Eckstein, B., via Internet Archive (2007)
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    . Simon & Schuster: New York. Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Hobden, H.
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    . Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Klokov, K.B. (2023)
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    . Pastoralism, 13, 15.
  • Krylenko, V. (2017)
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    . Estuaries of the World, Springer: Cham, 13-15.
  • NASA (2012)
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    . Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Obscure Histories (2022, December 20)
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    . Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Radio Free Europe (2015, March 10)
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    . Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Sauer, M., via Internet Archive (1802)
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    . Strahan: London. Accessed December 16, 2025.
  • Zonn, I., et al. (2016)
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    . The Eastern Arctic Seas Encyclopedia, 298-301.

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June 16, 2025

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