Thousands in rural areas of Eastern Finland still without electricity after Friday storm

Record-hot July ends with a bang

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Repairing the damage caused by a powerful thunderstorm which swept over Finland from the southeast through central areas in the early hours of Friday has continued. Thousands of households mainly in rural areas in the east of the country were still without electricity as of Sunday evening.
      With winds of nearly 30 metres a second in places, the storm brought to an end a month-long heatwave which set a new temperature record in Finland.
     
A total of about 10,000 households were still without electricity on Sunday evening. The situation was most difficult in sparsely-populated areas and on islands in the Saimaa waterway.
      Electric utilities expect to restore service to most areas by the end of the week.
     
Dairy farms, which heavily depend on electricity for milking and refrigeration, were among the worst affected. At the Mäntylä farm in Rautjärvi, the winds tore off the metal roof of the cowshed, and the electricity is still cut off.
      “We get drinking water for the animals with a gasoline pump, and we get electricity for milking from the tractor. We could refrigerate the milk with a generator, but the thunder broke both tanks”, says Heli Vilkko of the Mäntylä farm.
      She is nevertheless pleased that no people were hurt, and that the cows also managed, even though they were outside when the storm hit.
      In Rautjärvi, falling trees damaged houses and cars and blocked a large proportion of the roads in the rural community.
     
In Sulkava, electricity poles and electric lines were still lying on the ground on Sunday.
      Road access to many of the summer cottages in the area was blocked off by the fallen trees, as fisherman Ari Partanen was enlisted by the local authority to provide alternate transport with his boat.
      Janne Immonen and Sari Kähönen, who were spending their summer holiday in a cottage in the area, had planned to take their six-year-old son Joona to the Särkänniemi amusement park in Tampere, but the storm changed their plans.
      Until Sunday afternoon, when the last of the trees were cleared from the roads, the family’s only contact with the outside world was by boat.
     
Telephones are still out of service in the storm area. Telecommunications service provider Elisa said that it had managed to get two-thirds of its problem networks back into operation on Sunday. Sonera said that a third of its base stations, which had been silenced by the storm, were working again.
      The Federation of Finnish Financial Services estimates that insurance companies face a bill of about EUR 20 million from the storm.
     
The weather was the biggest domestic news item in Finland in July - and not only because of the traditional seasonal shortage of hard news.
      On Thursday last week, a new temperature record was set for Finland in Liperi, at the airport which serves the eastern city of Joensuu, where the mercury rose to 37.2 degrees Celsius, or 99.0°F.
      The previous record, 35.9°C, was recorded in Turku on July 9th, 1914.
     
The Finnish Meteorological institute reports that July as a whole set a new monthly heat record for Finland, with temperatures in southern and central areas repeatedly reaching the high 20s, and exceeding 30°C in many communities. The sustained warmth was unprecedented: on only one day in the entire month - July 24th - was the official benchmark for "hot weather" of 25°C not reached somewhere across the length and breadth of Finland.
      In four locations, a total of 27 days out of the 31 met the "hot" criteria, so smashing a previous best of 22 days recorded in 2003.
     
Puumala, one of "the usual suspects" whenever the weather turns warm, had the highest mean temperature for the whole month of 23°C, breaking the previous monthly mean record, set in 1925.
      Together with Lahti and Kouvola, Puumala also recorded a blistering spell of six straight days (11.-16.7.) when the mercury rose above 30°C, and the small community in the south-east of the country - which caused some amusement after it was discovered that its meteorological station was "perhaps overly ideally sited in a sunny and wind-sheltered spot" - has racked up eight days of temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius this summer.
      Nobody is claiming they are cheating - it really has been that hot - and nobody is terribly jealous, as there has been more than enough warmth to go around, although as a footnote we might add that the lowest overnight temperature recorded while we were away was -1°C, in Salla in Lapland, on the 24th.


Links:
  Weather records in Finland (Wikipedia)
  Finnish Meteorological Institute

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