Mt Paektu 2 750 meters above sea level is the coldest place in the DPRK. It has also extreme weather. The weather is so changeable that it witnesses several changes a day.

A storm breaks out all of a sudden on the calm lake, bringing rain clouds. After a moment, the dark clouds hovering over the land give way to the clear, blue sky. The falling rain instantly turns into fist-sized hailstones, which pour down heavily.

When the hail stops, wet flowers bloom under the sun on one side, and white snowflakes of winter fly around on the other side. That is why the Korean ancestors described the weather of Mt Paektu as kaleidoscopic changes of winds and clouds or the wonders of nature. Such changeable weather is because Mt Paektu is located on highland and in high latitude north.

Warm air blowing from the East Sea of Korea tends to collide with cold and dry air from the north to condense into rainfall or snowfall, if not cloud or fog covering the land. Unusually strong winds blow irregularly, and the weather is volatile.

Winter cold is biting, and the mercury falls to 40 degrees below zero. The average annual temperature on Janggun Peak amounts to -7.5 degrees, the lowest in the DPRK.

The average annual humidity reaches 74%.

As the area sits on highland with its surrounding landform being a flat basalt, wind blows extremely harder and changes complicatedly compared with other areas.

A tornado, a kind of extremely strong whirlwind, is frequent around Lake Chon.

When a tornado occurs on the lakeshore, it may suck fist-size stones up into sky and a water column on the lake. A large-scale tornado creates an intense suction vortex which lifts a water column running up to hundreds of metres and moves to a distance of 200 to 300 metres, with a large eddy on the water surface and thick mist swirling around the water column.

Trees growing in the area above 2 000 metres above sea level have their branches stretching eastward like the flags fluttering in the wind. The instantaneous wind speed is very high, with its maximum average speed for 10 minutes reaching 60 metres per second on Janggun Peak.

According to records, a snowstorm that started on December 20, 1990 lasted for seven days through to December 26, and it was so strong on April 9, 1985 that the visibility distance was less than one metre.

Warm air from south and cold air from Mongolia converge on the area to form fog very often. About 80 percent of fog frequency is accompanied by rain. Clouds are frequent and so are lightening discharges. Thunder and lightning are ubiquitous. Thunder rocks heaven and earth and flashes of lightning travel across the vast fields of the Paektu plateau.

Every year, the thunderbolt frequency amounts to 48 times or so, with 60 to 70 percent of them occurring between June and July. A fireball lightning was observed at around 15:40 on May 14, 1984, and a dendritic lightning in late September 1989.

Pak Song Chol