Nur-Sultan is the second-coldest national capital in the world after Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a position formerly held by Canada's capital, Ottawa, until Nur-Sultan attained capital city status in 1997. Nur-Sultan has an extreme continental climate with warm summers (featuring occasional brief rain showers) and long, very cold, dry winters. Summer temperatures occasionally reach  while  is not unusual between mid-December and early March. Typically, the city's river is frozen over between the second week of November and the beginning of April. Nur-Sultan has a well-deserved reputation among Kazakhs for its frequent high winds, the effects of which are felt particularly strongly on the fast-developing but relatively exposed Left Bank area of the city.