With over 85 inches of snow, this winter is already the snowiest Moscow has seen in a century -- and it's only February. "The snow this year has already reached one and a half times the climactic norm," the city's deputy mayor for residential issues remarked this week, as Russian news outlets breathlessly reported on the "Storm of the Century" and nightmarish traffic jams that, when added up, spanned the distance from Moscow to Madrid.
But not all of the country has experienced the capital's record-setting snowfall. During a week that marked the one-year countdown to the 2014 Winter Olympics, the temperatures in the Russian host city of Sochi reached as high as 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Olympic organizers have guaranteed snow for next year and have already begun stockpiling the little they have, even as Moscow has been blanketed.
As the United States braces for its own blizzard, here's a look at what Muscovites have been putting up with all winter long. Above, a woman walks past the ice covered Moskva River in Moscow on Feb. 1.
EPA/SERGEI ILNITSKY
