Norway’s West Coast was trying to mop up after another day of record rainfall in Bergen and heavy downpours from Måløy to Kristiansand. Bergen set another dubious record for precipitation, with some neighbourhoods getting more rain than ever before in August.
An official weather station at Florida in Bergen registered 76.2 millimeters of precipitation in a 24-hour period from Monday to Tuesday. “The last record is from 1989 when it rained 71.8 millimeters in the course of one day in August,” Lillian Kalve, meteorologist for Varvarslinger på Vestlandet told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).
The Florida weather station started operating in 1983, with measurements before that taken at another weather station at Fredriksberg. It had never recorded more rainfall for a day in August either. The new record comes after Bergen already had logged its wettest July in 46 years.
The reainfall was even heavier at Opstveit in Kvinnherad, just southeast of Bergen. Its weather station recorded 144 millimeters of precipitation, the highest amount in the whole country on Tuesday. Next came Eikemo with 102.2 millimeters.
The downpours led to more flooding, more drenched mountainsides and more closed roads including the state highway RV13 between Odda and Kinsarvik on the Hovland-Lofthus stretch. It was closed after geologists feared another landslide.
The heavy rains were accompanied by strong winds that toppled many trees, also as far south as Tønsberg, where meteorologists were calling the August deluge an early autumn storm. Several communities also lost power because of lightning or fallen power lines.
newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund
