Storm turns off Estonia and Finland: planes are blown off the runway

Which hit Finland and Storm Hannes left hundreds of thousands of households without electricity in Estonia. This has not been seen in the last 10 years.

The storm Hannes that hit Finland caused extremely serious damage in the service area of the electric grid company Elenia.

"According to our estimates, this is the largest outage in the last ten years, surpassing even the consequences of the November storm Jari last year," Elenia emergency manager Heikki Paananen told Yle.

According to him, the company was preparing for the storm, but did not expect such a force of the elements.

"By nine in the morning on December 28, about 115,000 households in Finland were still without electricity, of which more than 42,000 were Elenia customers. Elenia operates in Southern and Northern Pohjanmaa, Central Finland, Pirkanmaa, as well as in the Kanta-Hame and Pyayat-Hame regions," Yle writes.

The damage on the ground is serious, about 700 troubleshooting requests have been registered, and this number is expected to almost double.

"This is certainly a job for several days. It will take until next week before all power outages are eliminated," Elenia added.

Meanwhile, Finnair reported that some aircraft had to circle in the air and wait for suitable weather conditions to land. And in Kittilya two planes rolled out of the runway altogether and slid into a snowdrift. In turn, in Kaskinen, the ferry service between the city and Eskilse Island was suspended due to bad weather conditions, Fintraffic reported.

The storm seized Estonia by the edge, but the electricity supply in the country was also affected.

"As a result of the storm that hit Estonia on Saturday, by 6 a.m. on Sunday, more than 14,000 Elektrilevi customers were left without power. Then this number began to decline," ERR reports.

According to Elektrilevi's online map, power outages affected the most customers in Harju County. Next in the number of victims of power outages are Lyaene-Virumaa, Raplamaa and Tartumaa.

According to Mihkel Hjarm, chairman of the Board of Elektrilevi, storm winds are still very strong, so for now it is possible to give only preliminary forecasts for the elimination of accidents.