High winds over weekend cause electricity outage in eastern Finland

Strong gales over the weekend caused thousands of households in eastern Finland to be without power.

It was estimated that on Saturday, roughly 41,000 households were without power, with at least 11,000 of those without power overnight.

Speaking to STT, Jukka Leppänen, a project manager at PKS Sähkönsiirto — the primary electricity provider in eastern Finland — explained that the majority of faults in the electrical supply system had been fixed Saturday night.

However, 700 households in the North Karelia region were without electricity by Sunday morning. This outage also remained in the North Savo region, with around 300 households without power.

The outage was caused by an electrical storm that hit the eastern portion of Finland, from Kainuu to Karelia. Winds reached up to 25 meters per second.