A thick snowfall that lasted for over 24 hours disrupted traffic particularly in Southern Finland on Sunday. Similar flurries are experienced in Finland only once in a decade. Only the most northern parts of the country were untouched by the storm.

   

Some 20-30 centimetres of snow fell during a period of 24 hours, with even more snow measured in places. All snowploughs were in use, but as the main highways needed to be ploughed several times during the day, many smaller roads were left uncleared for the whole of Sunday.

   

Train traffic was behind schedule up until late Sunday night, and the police were informed of 80 collisions and other accidents. One hundred motorists reported being stuck in the snow.

   

Downtown Helsinki proved a nightmare for motorists, as the majority of streets had not been ploughed in the morning. Many sidewalks were still covered in a foot of snow in the afternoon.

   

Residents spent hours digging their automobiles out from under the snow, blessing the fact that it was not a workday.

The Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport was closed

for several hours on Sunday afternoon due to a problem with equipment that assists approaching aircraft. The malfunction was evidently caused by the weather.

   

As a result, 25 arriving aircraft were rerouted to the airports at Tampere, Turku, Vaasa, Pori, and Jyväskylä to wait for Helsinki-Vantaa to reopen. One flight from Moscow turned back. Flights began landing at Helsinki-Vantaa again at around six thirty pm. Departures were also delayed due to the weather conditions.

   

Southern parts of Finland will be affected by the aftermath of the snow storm for the early part of the week. If temperatures rise on Tuesday according to forecasts, electricity distribution may experience problems.

   

Delivery of Helsingin Sanomat was extremely late in some areas on Sunday morning. Nearly half the day's newspapers were delivered later than normal, or seven a.m., with papers hand-delivered to many streets that were inaccessible by car.

   

In the worst cases, subscribers did not receive their paper until seven in the evening, a record in its own right.