Warm January

Snowmen will protest around Helsinki next Tuesday. The reason? Their very survival in southern Finland.

We have had no permanent snowcover this winter. The lowest temperatures were about -10 deg C so far---a far cry from the -26 deg C I experienced several times last winter.

From the Helsingin Sanomat:

"In January, the mean temperature in Helsinki was 0.6°C, which is 4.8 degrees higher than the average for the period from 1971 to 2000.

According to the February forecast by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the weather will continue being clearly warmer than average. Long sub-zero periods will be unlikely, particularly in the southern parts of the country. The temperatures will be ranging from below 0°C to some degrees above zero.

On the winter holiday week, the Greater Helsinki area used to have so much snow that ski-track machines were able to make fairly good ski tracks. Today such machines are of no use, and lie idle.

The previous skiing holiday with plenty of snow was experienced in 2005, when a snow cover of 40 centimetres was measured at the Helsinki-Vantaa weather station. A year ago, the snow cover was just five centimetres thick."

The complete article from the Helsingin Sanomat can be found here.