While we were away...

...it rained.
      A lot.
      At least in the south of Finland.
     
Mind you, there was nothing very unusual in that - it had already been the wettest and one of the warmest Decembers "in the last fifty years" before we broke up for the Christmas holiday, and now we learn from the Meteorological Institute that in fact it was the wettest December since 1974, and that winter - in the strict thermal sense - has started only in the north of the country and some chillier parts of Central Finland.
      The amount of precipitation - and down here in the south it was almost all coming as rain - was in places 2.5 times the annual average for the month, and many observation stations set new records both for precipitation and mean temperature.
     
Only one in three of the country's ski-resorts have got their lifts running, and stores have been discounting winter coats with a vengeance, as the temperature has remained stubbornly above freezing.
      On December 27th, the thermometer very nearly reached 10°C in Helsinki, and the 9.9°C that we got was enough to set a new monthly high.
     
     
What WAS news, and not very pleasant news at that, was that the normally mild-mannered Zephyrus decided to turn nasty and to blow up a real storm to mark the holidays, with gusts of near-hurricane force sweeping across the south and west of the country on Boxing Day and into the 27th.
      Norway and Sweden got it first as "Storm Dagmar", with the Atlantic coast of Norway badly battered by winds of hurricane strength.
      The combination of rain-soaked ground, winds gusting above 100km/hour, and Finland's well-known abundance of trees meant that the power went out all over the place, and basically the country is still clearing up from its own "Storm Tapani", and some unfortunates are even now without electricity, several days on from the big blow.
     
Naturally, the energy distribution companies have come in for a good deal of flak (see the article from today).
      Few people who have had to throw away the entire contents of their freezer and who have been shivering around a wood fire (if they have one, that is) for the best part of a week are going to be very sympathetic towards the managements and shareholders of power utilities that have cut back on maintenance crews in order to improve their quarterly financial statements.
     
Let's hope that the New Year now begun brings a semblance of order at least to the natural world - 2011 provided more than enough political and economic shocks, and we are clearly not out of the woods in that department as 2012 gets under way.
     
     
A Happy New Year to all our readers!


See also:
  Record rains take a brief break, but damage already done (20.12.2011)

Links:
  FMI: Storm on St. Stephen´s Day was rare event
  Finnish Meteorological Institute