Season's first snow cover extends to Southern Finland

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The first snow of the season reached southernmost parts of Finland Wednesday night. Residents of Helsinki woke up Thursday morning to the sight of a sheet of white covering the ground.
      Outside Finnish Lapland, the southwestern city of Turku has the thickest blanket - about seven centimetres - an exceptional amount for this time of the year.
      Lohja, about 50 kilometres northwest of Helsinki, got a layer of wet snow already on Tuesday morning, after which temperatures dropped below freezing, keeping the ground white through Wednesday.
     
In Northern Finland the snow cover is at least 5 centimetres deep, and in the Inari region of Finnish Lapland there is already 16 centimetres of snow on the ground. In Sodankylä, the landscape was quite wintry, with nine centimetres of snow on the ground and temperatures dipping below -20 degrees Celsius.
      Eastern Finland has a thin cover of snow. The Vaalimaa border crossing reported scattered patches of snow with temperatures about -1 degrees. Jouko Kaukoranta of the Finnish Frontier Guard described the landscape as white, with the stubble of mown fields sticking out.
     
At the Finnish Meteorological Institute, special researcher Ari Venäläinen says that it is typical for Finland to get its first snow at about this time of the year.
      "Usually these snows melt. Now the weather seems to be remaining cold for at least five days." He notes that two years ago the winter came very suddenly and it remained cold, but usually the southwesterly wind brings warmer air, and as the sea is still not frozen, the snow is likely to melt fairly soon at least in the southern part of Finland.


Links:
  Finnish Meteorological Institute

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