While much of the U.S. and Europe have spent this summer trapped under relentless heat domes and record highs, the bottom of the planet has swung hard the other way. Concordia Station, perched high on the Antarctic plateau, plunged to minus 119 degrees on July 18.

According to reports, that's the lowest temperature recorded anywhere on Earth since 2012, and it came within half a degree of Concordia's all-time record.

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Continuous darkness

Remember, it's the dead of winter in Antarctica. While we sweat through July, Antarctica is deep in its polar night, which brings weeks of constant darkness.

Concordia sits in just about the perfect spot for extreme cold: more than 10,000 feet up on the interior ice sheet, where the air is thin, bone-dry and has almost nothing to hold onto what little heat exists.

For perspective, it didn't quite break Earth’s all-time record of minus 128.6 degrees, set at Russia's Vostok Station in 1983.

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We still have quite a bit of winter to go in the Southern Hemisphere, where temperatures usually bottom out in late August, just before the sun returns, so more cold readings are still to come.

It's an incredible reminder of how wide Earth's thermostat really swings. Death Valley hit 121 degrees last week, and Palm Springs topped out at 114 just three days prior. That’s a 240-degree temperature swing on the same planet in the same month.

Editor's note: the minus-119-degree reading is provisional and subject to official validation.

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