Storm Hans
A powerful storm has brought destruction to Norway, causing landslides and leaving an entire town stranded, as meteorologists warned of the strongest rainfall in a quarter of a century.
The storm – named Storm Hans – has killed two people, ripped off roofs and caused widespread disruption across northern Europe in a summer that started with wildfires across much of the region.
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Strong winds and rain continued across the region, also causing disruption, cancelling ferries, delaying flights, uprooting trees, flooding streets and also causing outages across Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden.
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The Swedish meteorological and hydrological institute issued a red warning for Halland and parts of Småland for Tuesday and Wednesday. The institute said Hans had also brought in warm air across the north, leading to tropical nights in multiple locations in Norrland. On Tuesday, Haparanda recorded a temperature of 30.2C – its highest August temperature since 1969.
Meanwhile, in Estonia, nearly 10,000 people were left without power. In Denmark, waves of up to eight metres were reported and beach houses were washed into the North Sea. In Finland, authorities urged people to reconsider whether they needed to go out to sea.
H/t Harald Hanche-Olsen
Hello, Everyone
I’m still here even though it’s been a while. About a year ago I commented on how last summer was the driest on record in South-Eastern Norway. To hydropower companies, such as the one I work for, the drought made it a serious challenge to keep our powerplants running. To the end consumers the consequence was economy-breaking energy prices and a real danger of energy rationing during the winter. In the end what saved us (for the time being..) was heavy rainfall in late September/early October and lots of snow in January.
Well, this year is the polar opposite. In (what used to be) a “normal” year, the reservoirs would rise rapidly and the water flow in the rivers would increase something like 5-fold around the 2nd half of may due to snowmelt in the mountains (often we would get a second peak in the autumn due to heavy rainfall). It was this “spring flood” that was completely absent last year. By comparison this year has been closer to “normal”. Until the last couple of weeks, that is. A little over two weeks ago now the weather forcasts predicted heavy rain, but no one was prepared for just how much. I was working when the downpoor began and spent the next two days monitoring one of Norway’s largest lakes as it kept rising faster than anything anyone had ever seen. I must have recieved something like 6-7 phonecalls in a single day telling me to open the floodgates even more than I already had (I barely had time to make one adjustment before they called back and asked for the next) because the situation was even worse than previously expected.
Still, this was nothing compared to what was about to hit us. We hadn’t even recovered from the last downpour when “Hans” arrived. As late as last friday the models seemed to suggest that the impact in our area would be relatively mild. Then during the weekend the forcasts got a lot more dire and emergency level red was declared on sunday evening. All our reservoirs have already surpassed the highest levels seen during the last spring flood (usually by far the highest levels during the course of a year), and continue rising so rapidly the graphs look almost vertical (despite all the floodgates being open wide). It takes a lot of water to raise the level in one of these lakes by one centimeter: 34-137 centimeters in 24 hours is insane! There are already reports of closed roads, flooded basements etc. And yet the peak isn’t expected to pass before thursday or friday this week. And the summer has always (in the past) been the driest season of the year!
Most of the people I talk to still seem to think of each new extreme weather event as a freak anomali that will pass, and then everything will go back to “normal”. But it won’t. We left “normal” behind years ago, and the worst we have ever seen so far may soon be as good as it ever gets.
That sounds terrifying.
[…] a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Storm […]
Speaking of energy prices, lately the price of electric power has gone negative. Yes, you’d get paid for using it! (Except we also pay for transporting energy through the wires to our homes, and the total price is still positive, I think.) The reasons for the phenomenon are complex, involving more than just water, but still, the fluctuations in energy prices have been just astounding. That may also be part of the new normal.
Oh, I have noticed. Sunday the 16th of July was the darkest day in the history of the Norwegian energy sector with spot prices between 2 PM and 3 PM reaching an all time low of -61,84 € per Mega-Watt-hour! I.e. that’s how much power companies had to pay for every MWh produced. And in case people are thinking “why not just shut down producion in those hours then?”, it’s not as simple as that. Shutting down a hydro power plant is not a trivial task, especially if you want to keep the your water levels, water flows etc. under control (as you should!). Besides production plans are made one day in advance, we’re obligated to deliver as many MWhs as stated in the production plan at the spot price that’s been determined, and we don’t yet know what the spot prices will be when the prodction plan is submitted. Indeed the only way we were able to (somewhat) reduce our losses was by redudcing the production from some of our powerplants and buying back the missing MWhs at negative prices (i.e. getting paid to recieve those same MWHs from someone else). Totally crazy!