According to Arctia, the Finnish state-owned company responsible for operating a Finnish icebreaker fleet, the icebreaking season 2017-2018 in the Baltic Sea ended.
The season ended with Finnish icebreakers on Friday, May 18, 2018, when the last icebreaker “Kontio” returned from the Bay of Bothnia to the icebreaker base in Katajanokka, Helsinki. The conditions were more challenging in the two previous winter, but normal for the long-term average.
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As Jouni Vainio, an ice expert at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, informed:
At the end of January, in the light of the long weather forecasts, the probability of severe colds was only 1%. In mid-February, the situation changed significantly. The iceberg of the Baltic Sea began to grow. The largest winter ice situation was reached on March 5, when the ice was over 170,000 square kilometers. This is very close to the average of long-term statistics.
Arctia’s icebreakers did a total of 663 operating days, 2.027 grants and 222 tugboats. On days when an icebreaker was unable to carry out his duties for technical reasons, only four were generated during the period. All eight icebreakers were in icebreaking from 28 February to 29 March.
