How a Jura Village Keeps France's Coldest Record
Mouthe, a small settlement in the Doubs department of eastern France, sits in a hollow on the Jura's second plateau at more than 900 metres above sea level. That exposed bowl is why it holds France's official weather record for cold: minus 36.7 degrees Celsius, measured on 13 January 1968.
The village's polar winter climate has earned it the nickname 'little Siberia'. Gabriel Chamoulaud, a meteorologist at Météo-France's North-East interregional centre in Strasbourg, says the record is unlikely to be erased in his lifetime. At the same time, he notes, the village's warm extremes keep climbing, with a late-June reading of 34.2 degrees Celsius recently recorded.
The cold, he explains, comes from a phenomenon called a 'cold hole': a clear, open bowl without fir trees in which chilled air collects on nights when the sky is clear and the wind is still. That combination lets heat escape and prevents warmer air from mixing in, producing temperatures far below the surrounding area.
The Topography and Climate Behind Mouthe's 'Cold Hole'
Topography, not just altitude, creates the cold
The village lies between two ridgelines a few kilometres from the Swiss border. Cold, dense air drains downhill into the depression and remains trapped under calm, clear conditions. That makes Mouthe's frost more intense than its altitude alone would suggest, and it explains why such records are so localised.
A record that may survive a warming climate
Gabriel Chamoulaud's observation points to an asymmetry: while hot extremes in the same village are becoming more frequent or intense, the conditions needed to set a new national cold record remain very rare. The existing low from 1968 therefore remains a strong historical marker even as average temperatures rise.
A village defined by its extremes
For Mouthe, the record is part of its identity. The nickname 'little Siberia' and its status as a symbolic village rest on the same geographic quirk that shapes daily winter life, local climate monitoring and the way the settlement is perceived across France.
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