Around Pajala, it has been consistently bleak for weeks on end with temperatures of 30 degrees below zero. Preliminary data shows that the average temperature in Pajala from December 30 to January 12 was minus 31.8 degrees.
Birger Lahti lives in Kaarnevaara, about six miles north in Tornedalen from Pajala.
- From New Year's and for 16 days afterwards we had temperatures below minus 30, says Lahti.
Extra cold
After a life in the north - he turns 62 this year - and a job in the forest, he is used to low temperatures. But this was something special. His own thermometer showed a low of minus 37 during those days. Life is limited when it is so cold, he says.
- And you don't want to drive around in a car for fun.
The coldest temperature in the country was in Gielas in the Lapland mountains, which recorded minus 40.8 degrees on January 4.
Southern Sweden experienced Anna when January started with snow, lots of snow, in many places. Anna is the first storm to be named from a new list of names for storms that is common to Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
Snow cannon with thunder
In Härnebo in southern Hälsingland, the snow depth grew from 4 centimeters on New Year's Day to over a meter on January 3. In Oskarshamn, half a meter of snow fell on January 2–3.
Uppsala had its wettest January in 300 years.
And when there were snowstorms along the southern Norrland coast in the first half of the month, they were accompanied in some places by thunder.
- There was quite a lot of thunder when we had a snow squall at Kramfors and the surrounding area, says Emma Härenstam, meteorologist at SMHI.
