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A dam in southern Norway partially burst on Wednesday following days of heavy rain that triggered landslides and flooding in the mountainous region and forced downstream communities to evacuate, officials said.

Flooding in Norway and neighbouring Sweden has carried away sheds, small houses and mobile homes, with officials warning that more is yet to come.

The extreme weather in Scandinavia has been in stark contrast to that seen in southern Europe, with the likes of , Portugal, , and Croatia all being ravaged by wildfires in recent days and weeks.

In Spain and Portugal, as the region boils under its third heatwave of the summer.

The country’s weather service has warned that the average temperature nationwide could hit a 70-year high, with almost the whole country under red weather alerts.

The Norwegian dam at the Braskereidfoss hydroelectric power plant, on the Glåma, Norway’s longest and most voluminous river, burst on Wednesday after days of rain.

Authorities initially considered blowing up part of the dam, the idea being to prevent communities downstream from being inundated by using a limited, controlled blast to release pressure on the dam.

But that proposal was scrapped after water later broke through the structure, police spokesman Fredrik Thomson told reporters.

‘The damage from a possible explosion of the concrete plant would be so great that it would serve no purpose,’ Thompson said.

Now officials are hopeful that they will see a gradual, even leveling of the water, Thompson said.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre warned that flooding would continue to be a threat as excess water flows downstream. ‘This is by no means over,’ he said.’It could be the highest water level in 50 years or more.’

The dam’s generators stopped working early Wednesday after a power grid failure, plant operator Hafslund Eco said in a statement.

An automatic system that should have opened the floodgates to release water failed.Rapidly rising water then spilled over the dam and into the power station itself, which caused major damage, officials said.

Huge volumes of water were pouring over the western parts of the dam, Thomson said. The water ripped apart a two-lane road and fences that ran across the top of the dam, with pictures from the scene showing water flooding through.

Per Storm-Mathisen, a spokesman for the power station operator, told the Norwegian news agency NTB that the water diversion seemed to be ‘going well.’

At least 1,000 people live in communities close to the river in the area, and authorities said that all were evacuated before the dam began to fail.

Footage has shown wooden cabins floating down overflowing rivers, with one clip showing a mobile home crashing into a bridge on Norway’s Hemsilar river.

People were seen standing on the bridge as they watched caravans being swept away, crashing into the bridge and being crushed under the weight. 

In other developments Wednesday, a Norwegian woman in her 70s died after falling into a stream the day before. 

She managed to crawl up onto the bank, but because of the floods, it took rescue teams several hours to bring her to a hospital, police said.

More than 600 people were evacuated in a region north of Oslo, and police in southern Norway reported that the situation there was ‘unclear and chaotic.’ 

All main roads between Oslo and Trondheim, Norway’s third-largest city, were closed, according to the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.

‘We are in a crisis situation of national dimensions,’ Innlandet County Mayor Aud Hove said.’People are isolated in several local communities, and the emergency services risk not being able to reach people who need help.’

The weather system known as Storm Hans has battered parts of Scandinavia and the Baltics for several days, causing rivers to overflow, damaging roads and knocking down branches that injured people.

Scientists have not done the intricate data analysis needed to see how much, if any, human-caused climate change played a role in the flooding.

But they have long warned that, as the world warms, extreme storms will produce larger amounts of rain in bigger bursts.

One major reason is that the warmer the air is, the more water it can hold.Also, many scientists say changes in the jet stream – the atmospheric currents that propel weather systems – often lead to storms stalling over places and dumping more rain. Those changes could be connected to climate change.

Two hydrologists said the conflict between old dams and heavier amounts of rain is becoming a more frequent problem.

University of Virginia hydrologist Venkat Lakshmi said his research shows that older dams are unprepared to handle rainfall that comes in heavier, harder-to-manage bursts.

Many of those dams were designed to withstand floods that were supposed to happen only once a century, but those events are now happening much more often, he said.

‘This type of conflict between climate and our hydrological infrastructure, such as dams, is going to become more common,’ said UCLA hydrologist Park Williams.

‘As rainfall intensifies, reservoirs and dams ‘will be increasingly out of tune with the changing climate.’

Meanwhile, the flooding in southern Norway and central Sweden carried away sheds, Liverpool Fotbollströja small houses and mobile homes.

Norwegian meteorologists predicted that up to 1.2 inches of additional rain could fall by Wednesday evening, saying ‘the quantities are not extreme, but given the conditions in the area, the consequences may be.’ 

In neighbouring Sweden’s second-largest city, Goteborg, large parts of the harbor were under water. Weather agencies for both countries issued urgent warnings.

Erik Hojgard-Olsen, a meteorologist with the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, told the Aftonbladet newspaper that the weather was unusual for this time of year.

‘It is exceptional to have such a low pressure (system) as Hans, which has brought so much rain for several days in a row,’ he said.’Especially for being a summer month, it has lasted a long time.’

The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate said record high flood levels were recorded in several places in the Drammensvassdraget, a drainage basin west of Oslo, the capital.

Erik Holmqvist, a senior engineer at the agency, said four lakes.including the Randsfjorden, the fourth-largest in Norway, were particularly vulnerable to flooding.

‘We have to go all the way back to 1910 to get the same forecasts for the Randsfjorden,’ Holmqvist told the VG newspaper.

The Scandinavian countries were not the only European nations to be hit by floods.

On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Slovenia and promised EU help to the small member state which was ravaged by recent floods that killed at least six people and caused extensive damage.

Slovenian officials have described last week’s floods as the worst natural disaster in the country’s 32-year history. 

Two-thirds of the Alpine state’s territory was affected and the damage could reach billions of euros, according to officials.

Torrential rains caused rivers to overflow, flooding houses and fields, damaging bridges and roads, cutting off entire villages and leaving thousands without electricity and running water.

Von der Leyen said after meeting with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob that they discussed a package of ‘three components’ designed to provide immediate financial aid but also mid and long-term support for reconstruction.

‘I am here today to let Slovenia and the Slovenian people know that Europe stands by your side,’ said von der Leyen, who visited a hard-hit village in northern Slovenia, by the border with Austria, to get a first-hand view of the devastation.

Von der Leyen said 100 million euros this year from the EU’s Solidarity Fund and 300 million euros in 2024 will be made accessible to Slovenia.

Additionally, it can draw from other funds or reprogram existing ones, she added.

In a stark contrast to the extreme weather in northern Europe, temperatures soared across Spain and Portugal on Wednesday as the two countries boil under their third heatwave of the summer.