File:Autumn snow along the Kolyma River, Siberia (MODIS 2017-10-12).jpg

English: The winter of 2017-2018 has had an abnormally early start, with snow falling in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) on August 30, draping flowers and yellowing larch needles in ice and a blanket of white. Typically, August hosts the brief transition from warm summer to cold winter, with autumn colors and brisk air, but relatively little precipitation. Snow is more likely in September, when winter sets in fully across the region.

On October 8, 2017, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite flew over northeastern Russia and acquired a true-color image of a blanket of snow lying across the tundra.

Thin white clouds hover above the snow in several areas, suggesting the snow may have freshly fallen from a passing storm. The Kolyma River can be seen winding through the region before it empties into the cloud-covered East Siberian Sea. The Kolyma typically becomes frozen over in October and remains ice-covered for roughly 250 days each year. Its blue color in this image indicates it has not yet frozen, so the deeply frigid temperatures of winter are yet to fully grip the region.