Water everywhere!

Water water water water!

So there were two things going on last weekend:
1) We had a major winterstorm coming in from the southwest, which pushed the water of the Baltic Sea our way. We also had a deep low pressure. (... course, you tend to have that, when you talk major storms.)

Flooding in Helsinki.Pic: Flooding in Helsinki.
Here's a pic of the local result, Sunday midday. It's not all that bad, you just can't walk the usual routes along the shoreline. The central marketplace in Helsinki was flooded (1.5 meters above normal), and a few major roads were closed due to floods. And of course there were flooded basements (and a few flooded streets) all along the coast.

Flooding of the Baltic is practially unheard of, up here. This was a record flood: they've been measuring water levels in Helsinki since 1904 and this is the first time we hit 151 cm. The previous record was 136 cm (27.1.1990). Dunno what the record before that was.

What we got was mild if compared to Estonia (1.7 meters above normal, and the full brunt of the storm) and St. Petersburg (+2.5 meters).

2) The southern storm brought warmer temperatures (would you believe +9 C in January? Me neither.), so all the snow was melting all over the place (they're still all white and pretty a hundred km to the north and east of us - it's just wet and black and dreary along the coast), so the local river (Vantaanjoki) was extremely busy.

Busy busy waterfall.Pic: Busy busy waterfall.
Here's a pic of the waterfall. I can't remember having seen the water going quite that horizontally over the rim earlier, even though the river does have major snowmelts every spring. Floodings upriver are normal in spring. Not in mid-winter.
(I would have included links to "normal" pics of the waterfall, but alas, nobody has seen fit to put such pics online.)

Water over the boards.Pic: Water over the boards
And I don't remember seeing the water come up from beneath the wooden floorboards of the waterfall platform before, earlier. 'course, that could just be because I've missed the busiest spring flood days, in previous years - I don't go there to have a look every day, after all.

Another view of water over the boardsPic: Another view of water over the boards.

The power of nature, eh? I'd love for our real winter to resume. It's been here, now it's gone, and I prefer frosty white winters to wet black ones.

A pal said (in the comments

A pal said (in the comments to that post) that all this is fallout from the major earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Yep, I think so too. We should have northern winds, not southern ones.

Jim, Lee: hmmm, perhaps I

Jim, Lee: hmmm, perhaps I should go find some Solomon's seal while the ground is still halfway thawed-up.
JIM: yep, butterflies. Them dang things are dangerous. And the weatherfolks have promised us, too, that winter will be where it belongs (... here) soonish.
TA: that global warming is a bit sudden, to hit wide areas just one week after the tsunami. (And a week after the biggest earthquake in 700 years, if I remember the rumors correctly. Which I might not.) No, I'm with Shep - shockwaves through the athmosphere gives us weird winter weather.
Unless you've been keeping the sauna door open?