The tropical weather in Finland this summer is astonishing. After my previous log post we were hit by a second storm. The first one was called Asta and a few days later arrived Veera. And a third one is predicted to hit the republic in a couple of days.
The Finnish Meteorological Institute reports that there was 23,000 cloud-to-earth lightnings during the Veera-storm. They have some kind of lightning detector network for counting. This number of lightnings is not unique, but extremely rare.
During the past 19 years we have been cruising almost all over the tropics aboard Scorpio. Avoiding certain areas when they are potentially exposed to tropical storms, hurricanes, cyclones, taifuns etc. has been our main guide-line when planning our routes. Look at the photo above, it is of a camper field in Pirkanmaa, Finland, where 50 of 100 camper wagons were completely destroyed. The destruction is quite similar to what we have been used to see in photos from marinas in places like like the Caribbean and Florida after a hurricane has passed. In Florida, however, people should know from experience that those disasters occur every now and then. The folks in the forests of Finland were taken by complete surprise – this was unthinkable.
(Click on chart for a blow up)
On the chart above you can see the path of the two storms, Asta and Veera. Asta hit from the southeast and passed very close to our summer place (between Mikkeli and Imatra on the map), but we didn’t have any problems. Just a few days later Veera-storm entered from the southwest and crossed the country in a northeasterly direction.
It is interesting that the traffic on our web site trippled after my previous blog. Apparently these climate issues are fascinating.
On 3rd August, when my previous post was published we had 3 times the normal traffic on this site.