Scandinavia And Japan Shiver, Highest Pyrenees Snowfall In Decades
A deep, persistent Arctic pattern has locked Scandinavia into one of its harshest starts to a year in decades, delivering extreme cold to inland Norway and crippling wind power output across Finland
In central Norway, we’re only 38 days into 2026 but Roros has logged 15 days below -30C (-22F).
That threshold has not been reached so frequently this early in the year since 1942, when 21 such days were recorded by early February.
Farther east, the same air mass has exposed a critical (and obvious) vulnerability in Finland’s energy system.
Wind power generation has slumped toward near-standstill as prolonged subfreezing conditions ice turbine blades and force operators to shut down equipment to prevent damage.
According to grid operator Fingrid Oyj, wind farms were producing only a tiny fraction of installed capacity last week, despite Finland’s heavy reliance on wind during winter demand peaks.
Temperatures in western Finland’s Ostrobothnia region, where most of the country’s wind capacity is concentrated, have consistently fallen to around -20C (-4F). Low fog sitting at blade height has accelerated ice accumulation, compounding the problem.
Even thin ice layers can throw turbines out of balance, triggering automatic shutdowns and prolonged curtailments.
Finland is often held up as a ‘renewables’ success story, with one of the highest shares of ‘renewable’ energy in final consumption across the EU. But operators have been forced to cease output precisely when electricity demand and prices are high.
The cold is truly biting this year, and Scandinavia’s ‘renewable’ generation, constructed at great cost to supposedly save the planet from ‘catastrophic warming’, is failing at scale.
Despite massive subsidies, ‘renewables’ have been a disastrous investment.
This chart shows the five-year performance of Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust (ORIT):
The same pattern appears at Greencoat UK Wind (UKW):
And also the Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG):
These are the free-market’s verdict. Subsidies can prop up individual projects, but they do not equal investor returns.
The cold has also pushed south of Scandinavia.
See more here substack.com
Some bold emphasis added
very old white guy
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Those who thought winter was no more are fools and those fools have been allowed to destroy the energy infrastructure of many countries. That sort of thinking has to be stopped as the world will revert to the stone age without “fossil” fuels. I really don’t know a single intelligent person that thinks that would be a good thing.
I like to always remind people that they cannot build a wind turbine or a solar panel without coal, oil and gas. A better use is in keeping the lights on and the furnaces running.
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Tom
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The law of unintended consequences comes calling as none of these global warming freaks consider the possibility that their schemes are total garbage.
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