What a wild and wooly night we had last night. Hurricane force winds swept in across Sweden and Denmark from the North Sea, creating chaos across the whole country, especially in the west and south coasts. This was the worst storm in this area since the 1960's and even made news in the Australian media. As you can see from the picture, ferries stayed in port as the waves and winds were too severe to risk a crossing. Reports of waves up to 5 metres high along the south coast were reported. The footage shown on the local news services of sea rescue boats battling the seas was frightening. The clouds were dark and menacing and people were asked to stay inside as high seas swept in the coastal areas, flooding the nearby towns.

On land, the story was just as scary. We live on the east coast, so we had some forewarning of what was heading our way. But living in a coastal town, we were buffetted with the full force of the wind. Trees were uprooted and flung across roads, bridges were closed, air traffic was diverted away from Sweden and Denmark and over 400,000 people lost their power. We had flickering lights all evening, but never totally lost connection. The saddest thing is that seven people have lost their lives (mostly in the southern area of Skåne) when trees crashed onto their cars.

We lay in bed awake until 4 a.m., listening to the windows shake, the winds howling along the street like a pack wild wolves or banshees and the waves crashing to the shore. The gusts were incredible and we saw pictures of cars with trailers that had been blown off the roads with the force. The fence next door went down in one big gust and I was thankful that we live upstairs and that there are no trees nearby that could come crashing through. Though I was worried that flying debris could break a window as we are only half a level up from the street. The rain also came beating against the windows and adding to the general noise.

The people we were most worried about were our friends who live aboard their boats in the guest harbour area. We have several friends there and at the height of the storm in the early hours of the morning we were concerned about how they were doing and if they were safe. We both love being on the boat in storms and feel the wind shake the boat and scream through the rigging. You really feel the power of the weather, though I think that last night was too much even for us. A quick look at the harbour web cam showed us that they all survived intact, which is a relief. If you look at the still shot I just captured from there, you can see it is calm, sunny and lovely this morning.

Yesterday, we noticed that the water around here was very high - much higher than anything I've ever seen before. The Baltic is closed off at the northern end as you can see from this map. The winds were strongly sweeping up from the south, driving the water up towards the north. Nynäshamn is situated at the south of the area that really protrudes into the Baltic (about where the St of St Petersburg is on the picture) so we collected a lot of water. A walk around the harbour and coastal road in yesterday afternoon just as the winds were really picking up, showed that the sea had risen several feet and many piers were actually under water. Even at our local boat club, the water was threatening to flood over the wharf area.

Today as it is calm and sunny again, we are going to see what storm damage occurred around town. Be back later with another report.