Sea waters are unseasonably warm and the Baltic is still almost ice-free. According to the Finnish Institute of Marine Research, waters around Finland are one or two degrees above the long-term average.
During normal winters, the northern parts of the Gulf of Bothnia are iced over at this time of January, but right now ice is only to be found in the most northern areas off Kemi and Oulu.
In more southerly areas ice has formed only in some sheltered bays of the Gulf of Finland, as well as in the Bay of Vyborg and near St Petersburg. Under normal winter conditions, ice would also be found in the open sea between Helsinki and Tallinn.
Officials are saying that it is likely ice will form along the coast of Helsinki no earlier than in mid-February.
Although ice conditions at the start of the year were much the same as at the beginning of 2007, developments is now well behind what it was 12 months ago.
At present there is less ice in the Baltic than even at mid-January during the winters of 1988-1989 and 1960-1961 which showed the least ice cover during 300 years of recorded measurements. According to the Finnish Institute of Marine Research, weather and ice conditions development during the winter of 1929-1930, the third most-free on record, were very similar to present sea conditions.
The winter of 1930 was followed by a ten-year period of low ice, which in turn was followed by a decade during the 1940s when the entire Baltic Sea froze over during the winter months.
