Up here in Sweden we are normally well protected from extreme weather. We just have our normal four seasons, but no hurricanes, monsoon rain, tornadoes, etc. They had a big storm in the southern Sweden last year (just about the worst ever in this country), there’s been large scale flooding in different parts of Sweden every year, and sometimes some places get dumped a meter of snow in a day.. but I doubt that any of our weather phenomena make it in the news outside the Nordic countries.Well, yesterday we had weather conditions that are just about as extreme as it gets over here. Rain, and lots of it. 136mm to be exact. Loos seems to have been on the western edge of the weather front, because in Ljusdal it didn’t seem too bad. But when we drove home, we were amazed to see the roadside ditch spill over the road at DÃ¥asen. Then when we turned to Loos, we got greeted by new warning signs – a landslide! There’s a short stretch of a road with a high embankment and the upper layer of this sandy embankment had relocated itself on the road, blocking a lane.
Then I read in the news today that there had been more damage – when small creeks turn into raging torrents, not much is safe. Houses get flooded, roads get eroded, and drainpipes get blocked. My house is safe from flooding, but there’s still a big puddle on the lawn behind my garage.
Both Kylätyevägen and Furuvägen (both are gravel roads) had suffered some damage and were closed off. By the time I got home today, they had re-opened Kylätyevägen but Furuvägen was still closed. I was curious to see why, so I went to have a look, paying lip service to the first barrier because the road looked ok to me. But then I found out why the road was closed, and decided to respect the second barrier:
It’s going to take a while before this road opens again…