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Thaw puts freeze on Svalbard
Record rainfall halts most flights during a two-week period, leaves travelers, mail, fresh food stranded

A shopper passes empty dairy shelves Thursday at Svalbardbutikken. Milk, eggs, vegetables and other perishables nearly ran out at the supermarket after weather prevented most planes from landing during span of more than 10 days. Store employees were forced to move what little remained after the dairy refrigerator malfunctioned. Two planes with fresh supplies arrived late Thursday and weather conditions are expected to be generally favorable for more flights during the coming days.

So much for warming opening up transportation in the Arctic.

Relatively high temperatures and record rainfall in January brought flights in and out of Svalbard to a halt for a sizable portion of the month. Groceries, mail, holiday plans and emergency transport were harshly impacted by what some residents called the worst series of cancellations they can recall.

Massive snowfall and knock-down winds might be the conventional image of airport-closing weather in the far north. But in this instance the culprit was water on top of ice, making many walkways and streets extremely hazardous in addition to airport runways.

"The runway is covered in ice," wrote Svalbard Airport Manager Ole Rambech in an e-mail interview. "When it is mild and it rains, it melts the upper portion of the ice and will not keep the sand we sprinkle on it. As long as the rain and mild weather continues, we have the problem."

Eight Scandinavian Airlines flights to and from Longyearbyen were canceled due to weather and slippery runways between Jan. 15 and 27, not including another flight cancelled due to heavy fog in Tromsø, according to Svalbardposten. Hundreds of passengers were stranded at length in both cities, filling hotels and forcing some travelers at one point to stay in Oslo because Tromsø had no more accommodations.

"We have not had similar (problems) during my years in Svalbard," wrote Rambech, a resident since 2001.

As for avoiding a similar situation in the future, "we could perhaps use large amounts of chemicals throughout the winter so that there never is ice on the runway," Rambech wrote. But such measures aren't likely to be considered "as long as the problem is limited."

Morten Helliksen, administrative director of Svalbardbutikken, also called the cancelled flights "a unique and special situation that we have not encountered before." He said the store ended up without milk, fruit and vegetables for two days after a mail plane which brings such items skidded off a Svalbard Airport runway Jan. 25.

"It was standing for four days at Svalbard Airport because technicians had to come from Tromsø and inspect the mail plane before it could return to Tromsø," he wrote in an e-mail, adding "it took two days before we could get milk, fruit and vegetables with a different mail plane."

Longyearbyen residents were in no danger of starving, since the store and its warehouse contain enough food for three to four months even if no deliveries by ship or plane were possible, Helliksen noted.

Production at the Svea coal mine also came to a halt for several days because flights carrying workers were grounded. Miners at the site could not continue working due to their employment contracts. "Some have waited three days to get home and it's terribly boring," said Per Nilssen, the mine's manager, told Svalbardposten on Jan. 28. He said he didn't know how much Store Norske lost because of the delay, but it was not a dramatic amount of money.

Longyearbyen's average January temperature of minus 7.2 degrees Celsius was warmer than Oslo's average of minus 8.1 degrees, an occurrence Norwegian Meteorological Institute officials said they have not seen before.

Total precipitation in Longyearbyen was 68.7 mm, far above the normal average of 15 mm. A record for rainfall was set by Jan. 18 with 39.8 mm, including a record 16.9 mm during a 24-hour period ending that day. About 15 mm more precipitation was recorded during above-freezing temperatures before the end of the month, although an exact rainfall total for the month was not available at press time.

Published in the Feb. 2, 2010, print edition.

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