Severe snow and wind storms in northern Sweden have left at least 10,000 households without power in Västerbotten. Schools have closed, and traffic disruptions are reported across affected areas.

Extreme cold has hit the north of Sweden, with temperatures reaching lower than -40 degrees Celsius in some areas.On Tuesday, train company VY announced that all departures north of Umeå were cancelled until Thursday for safety reasons, due to the cold weather.

More than 100 acres of forest have burned in Kornsjø on the Swedish border. At one point, several cabins were in danger of catching fire.

“This new snow has no name,” said Lars-Anders Kuhmunen, a reindeer herder from Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost town, near the Norwegian border. “I don’t know what it is. It is like early tjaevi, which normally comes in March. The winters are warmer now and there is rain, making the ground icy. The snow on top is very bad snow and the reindeer can’t dig for their food.”

Fredrik Dahlborg, manager of bus manufacturer VDL, told P4 Västerbotten that a combination of the weather and road salt is the problem. Despite this, Umeå municipality say they will keep using the electric buses.

The Finnish Coast Guard came to the rescue of a whale caught in a fish trap on Saturday in the narrow region of the Gulf of Bothnia known as Kvarken.

Twice as many reindeer have been killed on the roads in northern Sweden this month compared to the same period last year.