Ural (region) in the context of "Siberia"

The Ural Mountains (/ˈjʊərəl/ YOOR-əl), or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan. The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia, marking the separation between European Russia and Siberia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form continuations of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The average altitudes of the Urals are around 1,000–1,300 metres (3,300–4,300 ft), the highest point being Mount Narodnaya, which reaches a height of 1,894 metres (6,214 ft).

The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and the Ural economic region. Their resources include metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century, the mountains have contributed significantly to the mineral sector of the Russian economy. The region is one of the largest centers of metallurgy and heavy industry production in Russia.

Ural Economic Region (Russian: Ура́льский экономи́ческий райо́н, romanized: Ural'skiy ekonomicheskiy rayon) is one of twelve economic regions of Russia. This prominent industrial region consists of the following subdivisions (with their administrative centers): Bashkortostan (Ufa), Chelyabinsk Oblast (Chelyabinsk), Kurgan Oblast (Kurgan), Orenburg Oblast (Orenburg), Perm Krai (Perm), Sverdlovsk Oblast (Yekaterinburg) and Udmurt Republic (Izhevsk). It is mostly located in the Central, and partly in the Southern and Northern parts of the Urals, but also includes parts of the East European and West Siberian Plains. Its extent is different from that of the Ural Federal District; Bashkortostan, Orenburg Oblast, Perm Krai and Udmurtia are in the Volga Federal District while the other three are in the Ural Federal District.

Voronezh (/vəˈroʊnɪʃ, -ˈrɒn-/ və-ROH-nish, -⁠RO-; Russian: Воронеж, IPA: [vɐˈronʲɪʂ] ) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia, straddling the Voronezh River 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects western Russia with the Urals and Siberia, the Caucasus and Ukraine, and the M4 highway (Moscow–Voronezh–Rostov-on-Don–Novorossiysk). In recent years the city has experienced rapid population growth, rising to 1,057,681 in the 2021 Census, up from 889,680 recorded in the 2010 Census, making it the 14th-most populous city in the country.

Western Siberia or West Siberia (Russian: Западная Сибирь, IPA: [ˈzapədnəjə sʲɪˈbʲirʲ]; Kazakh: Batys Sıbır, IPA: [bɑˈtə̥s sɘˈbɘr]) is a region in North Asia. It is part of the wider region of Siberia that is mostly located in the Russian Federation, with a Southern part in Kazakhstan. It lies between the Ural region and the Yenisei River, which conventionally divides Siberia into two halves.

Western Siberia covers an area of 2,500,000 square kilometers (970,000 sq mi), nearly 80% of which is located within the West Siberian Plain. The largest rivers of the region are the Irtysh and the Ob. All major rivers of Western Siberia belong to the Kara Sea basin.

Europe spans seven primary time zones (from UTC−01:00 to UTC+05:00), excluding summer time offsets (five of them can be seen on the map, with one further-western zone containing the Azores, and one further-eastern zone spanning the Ural regions of Russia and European part of Kazakhstan). Most European countries use summer time and harmonise their summer time adjustments; see Summer time in Europe for details.

The time zones actually in use in Europe differ significantly from uniform zoning based purely on longitude, as used for example under the nautical time system. The world could in theory be divided into 24 time zones, each spanning 15 degrees of longitude. However, due to geographical and cultural factors, it is not practical to divide the world so evenly, and actual time zones may differ significantly from those based purely on longitude. In Europe, the widespread use of Central European Time (CET) causes major variations in some areas from solar time. Based on solar time, CET would range from 7.5 to 22.5°E. However, for example Spain (almost entirely in the Western hemisphere) and France (almost entirely west of 7.5°E, as illustrated in the map below) should theoretically use UTC, as they did before the Second World War. The general result is a solar noon which is much later than clock noon, and later sunrises and sunsets than should theoretically happen. The Benelux countries should also theoretically use GMT.

The Chelyabinsk meteor (Russian: Челябинский метеорит, romanised: Chelyabinskiy meteorit) was a superbolide that entered Earth's atmosphere over the southern Ural region in Russia on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20 YEKT (03:20 UTC). It was caused by an approximately 18-meter (60 ft), 9,100-tonne (10,000-short-ton) near-Earth asteroid that entered the atmosphere at a shallow 18‐degree angle with a speed relative to Earth of about 19.2 km/s (68,980 km/h; 42,860 mph). The light from the meteor was briefly brighter than the Sun (which is about -26.7 magnitude), visible as far as 100 kilometers (62 miles) away. It was observed in a wide area of the region and in neighbouring republics. Some eyewitnesses also reported feeling intense heat from the fireball.

The object exploded in a meteor air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast, at a height of about 30 kilometres (18.6 miles). The explosion generated a bright flash, producing a hot cloud of dust and gas that penetrated to 26 kilometres (16 mi), and many surviving small fragmentary meteorites. Most of the object's energy was absorbed by the atmosphere, creating a large shock wave. The asteroid had a total kinetic energy before atmospheric impact equivalent to the blast yield of 400–500 kilotonnes of TNT (1.7–2.1 petajoules), estimated from infrasound and seismic measurements. This was approximately 30 times as much energy as that released by the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.