An Arctic blast sweeping through Europe’s Nordic region continues to keep temperatures below 40C, aggravating the travel disruptions locals have been experiencing all week.
Weather maps show how for the next few days, Scandinavia – and Sweden in particular – will unlikely find relief from the snow, wind and cold. On Wednesday night, Sweden recorded its coldest temperature so far this season, and marked the coldest January since 1999.
The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute’s northernmost weather station in Kiruna municipality recorded on January 3 -43.8C. Speaking to local news outlet Aftonbladet, SMHI meteorologist Linus Karlsson commented: “That’s cold, to say the least.”
Earlier this week, another weather station also located in northern Sweden, Kvikkjokk, recorded -43.6C – the coldest temperature noted there since record began in 1888.
While not the whole of Sweden is experiencing such extreme temperatures, the entire country is “below freezing”, Mr Karlsson told TT newswire. The warmest temperature recorded within the country on January 5 was -1.4C, in Öland.
Other countries in northern Europe have been hit by freezing temperatures, gale-force winds and snow – including Denmark and Norway.
As a result, several bridges had to be closed for safety and not all the train and ferry services could run. Danish police also urged people to avoid taking to the road, and many schools had to be shut down.
This Arctic blast is expected to unleash its fury also on Britain in the coming days, weather forecasting website WXCHARTS suggested.
Weather maps show snow reaching Scotland by the end of next week. Maps forecasting the weather for the week that follows show the British Isles being entirely blanketed.
The cold temperatures will start to become more apparent from this week, according to Jason Kelly, a Met Office chief forecaster, who said: “The transition to lower temperatures will be noticeable over the weekend. It will become rather cold next week with lower-than-average temperatures across much of the UK, accentuated by brisk easterly winds in the south.
“As the prevailing weather conditions will be characterised by high pressure, a good deal of settled weather is likely. Clearer skies and a marked reduction in precipitation are expected, although any showers that do occur are likely to be wintry in nature.”
Ahead of the expected plunging temperatures, the UK Health Security Agency issued a yellow cold weather alert for vulnerable and elderly people. It will be in place from 9am on Saturday to 12pm on Friday January 12 across England.
