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WEATHER

Rain sees more Swedes shop for electronics

The wet Swedish summer isn’t bad news for everyone – Swedish retailers have seen an influx of television sales after many Swedes have decided to stay on the couch instead of brave the rain.

Rain sees more Swedes shop for electronics

“We’re seeing a clear difference between May, when it was nice weather, and June, when it turned around,” said Niclas Eriksson, head of media outlet Elgiganten, to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

The Euro 2012 football championships have no doubt been a big contributor to the TV sales, according to Eriksson, but it hasn’t only been televisions that have been jumping off the shelves.

Magnus Kroon, head of Swedish employers’ commerce organization Svensk Handel, explained that many other goods get a boost in sales when the weather is lousy.

He said that wet weather gear, board games, and wallpaper tends to sell well, and that many people take the opportunity to renovate the house too.

However, the overall raise in consumtion is not necessarily due to the rain, according to Kroon.

“I wouldn’t say that people shop more when it rains. It’s more of a shift in what people buy and where they get it,” he told the paper, adding that a growth in trade of between 2.5 and 3 percent in the June-August period is the prognosis, regardless of the weather.

TT/The Local/og

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WEATHER

Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Summer is finally here! Or least it is if you live in southern Norway, where a warm front coming up from Europe will bring t-shirt temperatures of 20C by Thursday, according to forecasts.

Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Warm air from southern Europe will combine with a high pressure zone which will bring clear skies and sunshine, with summery weather coming towards the end of the week, Norway’s national weather forecaster Yr has reported. 

“Thursday and Friday especially will be nice,” Ingrid Villa, a meteorologist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, told the public broadcaster NRK. “Then we will probably get temperatures of over 20 degrees Celsius in some places.” 

Patches of 20C warmth are expected both in western Norway around Bergen and in Western Norway around Oslo, with the area around Tromsø expected to have slightly cooler weather, although Villa said that “it will absolutely be something like summer there too”. 

The warm sunny weather is, however, expected to pass northern Norway by, with grey overcast skies expected for much of this week. 

But if you think summer has come to Norway to stay, you risk disappointment as much cooler temperatures are expected next week.  

“There’s nothing unusual in getting an early taste of summer in April and the start of May, and then we can quickly go back to cooler more spring-like weather,” Villa said. 

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