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WEATHER

More extreme weather heading toward Sweden

A new low pressure area with strong winds and precipitation is on the way toward Sweden. It will pass over central Sweden on Wednesday and will bring rain and snow over most of the country, as well as a risk of gale force winds in the south and along the coast.

More extreme weather heading toward Sweden

“There will be a complete storm on the North Sea and then, the night to Wednesday, we will see gale force winds in all of Götaland. There is a risk of more trees falling,” said Åsa Rasmussen, meteorologist for Sveriges Television (SVT) on Monday.

The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, SMHI, is preparing to issue warnings for the coming storm.

“There’ll be warnings, but we don’t issue these until 24 hours before something is expected to happen, so they are yet to come,” said Lisa Frost, forecaster at SMHI to news agency TT on Monday afternoon.

She is expecting warnings to be issued during Monday evening or during the night to Tuesday.

“My guess is that there will be a Class 1 warning for Götaland, but for parts of the west coast and down towards Skåne, I think it will be a Class 2 warning,” said Frost to TT.

But Danish forecasters are more worried about the readings.

“It is a very strong low pressure area, which can be best described as an ‘atmospheric bomb’ as the pressure drops so suddenly. We’re talking of gale force winds up to 35-40 metres per second,” said Danish meteorologist Andreas Nyholm to Danish paper Ekstrabladet.

However, Nyholm doesn’t think that the storm will hit Scandinavia with the same force that Dagmar did. He is joined in that opinion by Frost at SMHI.

Sweden has not had winds as strong as those recorded during recent weeks for years.

“Some of our stations measured the strongest winds in at least 15 years,” said Andersson to DN.

Between Christmas and New Year the weather calmed down slightly in the wake of storm Dagmar but by then northern parts of the country had suffered extensive forest damage caused by the strong winds.

The National Board of Forestry (Skogsstyrelsen) has been taking stock of damages done to Swedish woods over the Christmas period and while work continues it has to do so with more bad weather en route for Sweden.

“We hope to have some preliminary figures ready this week,” Johanna From, regional director at the agency told TT.

The Swedish National Railway (Statens Järnvägar, SJ) is also still working at establishing the extent of the damages done to its network in the aftermath of the storms.

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WEATHER

Denmark records deepest snow level for 13 years

Blizzards in Denmark this week have resulted in the greatest depth of snow measured in the country for 13 years.

Denmark records deepest snow level for 13 years

A half-metre of snow, measured at Hald near East Jutland town Randers, is the deepest to have occurred in Denmark since January 2011, national meteorological agency DMI said.

The measurement was taken by the weather agency at 8am on Thursday.

Around 20-30 centimetres of snow was on the ground across most of northern and eastern Jutland by Thursday, as blizzards peaked resulting in significant disruptions to traffic and transport.

A much greater volume of snow fell in 2011, however, when over 100 centimetres fell on Baltic Sea island Bornholm during a post-Christmas blizzard, which saw as much as 135 centimetres on Bornholm at the end of December 2010.

READ ALSO: Denmark’s January storms could be fourth extreme weather event in three months

With snowfall at its heaviest for over a decade, Wednesday saw a new rainfall record. The 59 millimetres which fell at Svendborg on the island of Funen was the most for a January day in Denmark since 1886. Some 9 weather stations across Funen and Bornholm measured over 50cm of rain.

DMI said that the severe weather now looks to have peaked.

“We do not expect any more weather records to be set in the next 24 hours. But we are looking at some very cold upcoming days,” DMI meteorologist and press spokesperson Herdis Damberg told news wire Ritzau.

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