Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a sovereign state in Northern Europe.

A peninsula with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, the country has land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east.

Estonia is south of the country across the Gulf of Finland.

Finland is a Nordic country situated in the geographical region of Fennoscandia, which also includes Scandinavia.

Finland's population is 5.5 million (2014), and the majority of the population is concentrated in the southern region.

88.7% of the population is Finnish people who speak Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages; the second major group are the Finland-Swedes (5.3%).

In terms of area, it is the eighth largest country in Europe and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union.

Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc).

Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to the intensity of the precipitation.

Both types of data can be analyzed to determine the structure of storms and their potential to cause severe weather.

Severe weather refers to any dangerous meteorological phenomena with the potential to cause damage, serious social disruption, or loss of human life.

Types of severe weather phenomena vary, depending on the latitude, altitude, topography, and atmospheric conditions.

High winds, hail, excessive precipitation, and wildfires are forms and effects of severe weather, as are thunderstorms, downbursts, lightning, tornadoes, waterspouts, tropical cyclones, and extratropical cyclones.

Regional and seasonal severe weather phenomena include blizzards, snowstorms, ice storms, and duststorms.

Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a given location.

Human beings have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia, and formally since the nineteenth century.

Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere at a given place and using scientific understanding of atmospheric processes to project how the atmosphere will change.