Anadyr (Chukchi name: Kagyrgyn) is a city in the high northeast of Russia, the administrative center of the Chukotka Autonomous Territory.
It is located on the coast of Anadyr Gulf of the Bering Sea, in the permafrost zone. It has a population of 13 053 persons (as of 2010).
Anadyr is located in the borderland.
The city has sea links with Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Vladivostok, Magadan, and other seaports. It also has an airport with regular flights to Khabarovsk and Moscow.
The word “Anadyr” can be found in historical chronicles in different lexical variations: “Onandyr” — the Chukchi river, “Anadyrsk” — a stockade town of times of Simeon Dezhnyov and Kurbat Ivanov (the mid 17th century). In August 1889 years carrying out the decree of the government of imperial Russia on establishing Anadyrsky District in the most northeast land of the state, L.F.Grinevetsky founded the New Mariinsk station at the mouth of River Kazachka. From it Anadyr city also started to develop.
The local Chukchi population calls the city Vjen, i.e. “a pharynx, an entrance” or Kagyrgyn, “an entrance, a mouth” that reflects its location at the narrow mouth opening an entrance to the top part of the Anadyrsky Lagoon.
Streets in Anadyr are built up with 5-storeyed block and panel houses. Most of the buildings are constructed on piles. In 2011 during a paleontological expedition an intact fossilated wood of the Early Paleocene Epoch was found in Anadyr. Earlier it had been believed that forests had never grown in this area. Now these wood samples can be seen in the Museum Center “Heritage of Chukotka”.
The climate here is subarctic, maritime and harsh. Average temperature of January is −22 °C, and of July is +11 °C. The warm period is extremely short. Mean precipitation is 350 mm, mostly during the warm period. Thanks to proximity to the sea, the winter in the city is warmer, and the summer is cooler than in the continental regions of Chukotka.