Saratov Oblast

Saratov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Saratov. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 2,521,892. The oblast is located in the southeast of European Russia, in the northern part of the Lower Volga region. From west to east its territory stretches for , and from north to south for . The highest point of Saratov Oblast is an unnamed hill of the Khvalynsk Mountains reaching above sea level. The oblast borders on: Volgograd Oblast to the south Voronezh and Tambov oblasts to the west Penza, Samara and Ulyanovsk oblasts to the north; Kazakhstan (West Kazakhstan Region) to the east Of particular agricultural importance are valuable agricultural ordinary and southern chernozyom areas; chestnut soils are widespread. The oblast has many water resources: besides the river Volga (which divides the oblast in two) there are many identified sources and mineral-water deposits. More than 40 small oil and gas fields have been explored in the region, with the unexplored part of the promising areas being unexplored. Explored a lot of oil shale deposits, including a large Ozinskoye, deposits of quality cement raw materials, phosphorites, construction, ballast and glass sands, construction clay and stone. The climate in the region is temperate: a long dry hot summer, on the left bank of Volga river a considerable number of days with a temperature above . Winter is frosty, the average number of days with precipitation is 12–15 per month, with fogs an average of 4–10 days per month, With snowstorms – an average of 4–10 days a month. Spring is short. In March, snowstorms, drifts on roads, an average of 5–7 days are possible. Days with fogs in March averaged 5–9. In the spring, usually with the last decade of March to the third decade of April, a limit is imposed on the roads with a hard surface on the movement of heavy vehicles, the beginning of which is timed to the transition of the average daily temperature through 0.