Record warm December in Finland

Many spending Christmas holidays indoors

print this

The slopes of the Serena Ski resort in Espoo end in a massive puddle.
      Fifteen-year-old Teemu Terttunen of Espoo is happy that there is even one slope open for his snowboard.
      "The weather is depressing. Fortunately the hill is open. If I don't get to snowboard, I would run short on ways to avert boredom."
      Ideal conditions for the boarder would be a couple of degrees below freezing, sunshine, and definitely natural snow rather than the man-made substitute.
      Aleksi Mattila, managing director of Serena Ski, says that most of those braving the wet snow are snowboarders, who can make do with less snow than skiers.
     
The days between New Year and Epiphany are usually a high season for ski centres in Southern Finland, with slopes packed with schoolchildren who are still on holiday.
      This year the number of visitors has plummeted.
      "Usually at this time we are completely full, with 1,000 to 1,200 visitors a day. Now we have had just 50", says Janne Uotila, CEO of Vihti Ski, another small ski-centre that picks up business from locals in the Greater Helsinki area.
     
The wet and unusually mild weather has sent those who would normally be filling up the ski slopes into indoor activities.
      The Mäkelänrinne indoor swimming pool in Helsinki has had about 25 per cent more visitors than normal - about 2,500 swimmers every day. Especially the children's pools at Mäkelänrinne and the Serena indoor water park in Espoo are packed with visitors.
     
Figures put out by the Finnish Meteorological institute on Tuesday confirm what the public already knew in their bones: that the past month was the warmest December ever recorded.
      In December, the average temperature was 6-8°C higher than the average for the past 30 years. These are huge numbers, and even the normally reserved meteorologists are having trouble describing the weather patterns as "within long-term norms".
      The Institute estimates that Decembers as warm as last month occur only about twice every thousand years.
      Wet Decembers and deserted ski resorts could become commonplace in Finland in the future, if climate change becomes permanent.
      In addition to being mild, December was also extremely rainy. According to the Meteorological Institute, precipitation was in places twice the long-term monthly average. Since much of the precipitation came down as rain, it is now difficult to find any snow cover in Southern and Central Finland. Even in parts of Finnish Lapland there is less than 10 centimetres of snow on the ground.
      School Christmas holidays continue this week in about half of the Finnish municipalities. The forecast for the remainder of this week does not suggest the children will enjoy very wintry conditions.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Tourists have to make do with man-made snow in Finnish Lapland (5.12.2006)
  Small lakes fill up in unseasonably warm and rainy autumn (28.11.2006)

Links:
  Finnish Meteorological Institute

Helsingin Sanomat