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