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In Stats: Just how warm was the year in Sweden?

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TT/The Local - [email protected]
In Stats: Just how warm was the year in Sweden?
Gothenburg on a sunny day in July 2019. Photo: Björn Larsson Rosvall/TT

The record for the warmest day of 2019 was set by a village you might not expect.

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In the far north, more than 1,000 kilometres north of Stockholm and close to the Finnish border, the mercury climbed to a sizzling 34.8C in the small village of Markusvinsa in Pajala municipality on July 26th, 2019.

This is according to preliminary statistics by national weather forecaster SMHI.

It was the hottest temperature measured anywhere in Sweden last year – and the hottest temperature ever north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden, a sign of how unusually warm the year was in the Nordic country.

In southern Sweden, many weather stations recorded average annual temperatures 10C higher than normal. It was mainly the mild winter that was responsible for keeping annual temperatures high.

In fact, 2019 was the only year in the last decade that did not see temperatures fall below -40C at any point.

Nikkaluokta in northern Sweden had the coldest day of the year, with -39.5C on January 31st.

But where there was no snow, there was rain, and it was an unusually wet year.

Gäddede, close to the Norwegian border, had the highest number of days of rain, snow or hail, with some amount of precipitation recorded on 260 out of 365 days. Torup in Halland, south-western Sweden, had the most rainfall altogether with more than a metre of precipitation, specifically a total of 1,363 millimetres.

Kalmar in south-eastern Sweden had the driest year, with only 383 millimetres of precipitation.

But what was the sunniest place last year?

That's the southern tip of the island of Gotland, where Hoburgen had 2,342 hours of sunlight.

To compare, Tarfala in the Lapland mountains had only 1,159 hours of sunlight.

Swedish vocabulary

sunlight – solljus

winter – vinter

snow – snö

rain – regn

hail – hagel

Learn more Swedish weather words in The Local's guide to talking about the weather.

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