Anadyr

Although the town itself has only been in existence for just over a century, the origins of the name Anadyr are much older. The name initially derives from the Yukaghir word "any-an" meaning "river". When Semyon Dezhnev met Yukaghir people in the area, the indigenous name was corrupted to form "Onandyr", later Anadyrsk, the name of the ostrog (fort) upstream of the present-day settlement, from which the current name is derived. The ostrog was the only Russian settlement east of the Kolyma River on the Chukotka Peninsula for most of the 18th century, though this original settlement was situated further up the Anadyr River, nearer to Markovo than the site of the current town. Pyotr Baranov (brother of Alexander Andreyevich Baranov) established a trading post near the present town site in the early 19th century and the Chukchi settled around it, forming the village of Vyon in 1830. …

The town of Anadyr is situated at the tip of a large cape, to the north of which is the mouth of the Anadyr River and to the east the estuarine part of that river, the Anadyrsky Liman, which empties into the Gulf of Anadyr. The town itself is situated on a gentle slope rising up from the sea, on the other side of the Anadyr River are mountains, but to the west, beyond the town are large expanses of flat tundra. It is on a similar parallel as Fairbanks, USA; Skellefteå, Sweden; and Oulu, Finland. Apart from those cities, the population at such northerly parallels is normally very sparse. Anadyr experiences a subarctic climate (Köppen: Dsc; Trewartha: Eclc). Winters are long and frigid; summers are pleasant and short. January is the coldest month with an average temperature of −22.1 °C (−7.8 °F). July is the warmest month with an average temperature of 12.1 °C (53.8 °F). …

Anadyr is an important sea port on the Bering Sea and is connected to almost all major Russian Far Eastern seaports. Anadyr's Ugolny Airport serves major and minor cities in the Russian Far East with connections to Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and Moscow, while Bering Air provides charter flights to Nome, Alaska in the United States. The airport is on the other side of the Anadyrsky Liman, and from January to May, transportation from the airport to Anadyr is by ice road. In the summer there is a ferry which transports passengers across the Anadyr River to the airport, but during spring and autumn when the river ice is melting and full of drifting ice floes, the only means of transportation to the airport is via helicopter. Although there is a network of roads between Anadyr and Tavayvaam, the town is not connected to any other settlement via road. …