Live cameras in Iisalmi, Finland

Iisalmi is a lakeside town in North Savo, about 87 km north of Kuopio on the road toward Kajaani. Around 20,000 people live here, making it the second largest of North Savo's five towns, and the municipality counts more than a hundred lakes, among them Porovesi, Onkivesi and Haapajärvi. Iisalmi received its town charter in 1891. It is a working town with a strong industrial side: Genelec builds studio loudspeakers here, Normet makes mining equipment, and Olvi, the last big independent brewery in Finland, has its home and visitor center in town.

Beer culture shapes the summer calendar. The Oluset festival fills the town in July, and Kuappi, a tiny restaurant listed by Guinness as the smallest in the world, seats just a couple of guests in a wooden hut next to the brewery's restaurant. The flea-market fair Rompepäivät is another local favorite.

What appears on the cameras

The views linked to Iisalmi come from road-weather stations that Fintraffic operates across Finland and releases through the Digitraffic open data service. Three main roads meet in town: national road 5 (E63) running north to Kajaani and south to Kuopio, road 27 west toward Kalajoki on the coast, and road 88 toward Raahe. Cameras along these routes look straight down the road, showing lane markings or snow cover, oncoming traffic and the sky. Each picture is a still, replaced with a newer one every few minutes.

The town keeps Finnish time, UTC+2 through the winter months and UTC+3 once daylight saving begins in late March. Around midsummer the sun rises just before three in the morning and sets after half past eleven at night, while in the darkest part of December the sun clears the horizon for only about four and a half hours, from about ten until a little after two. Cold snaps of minus twenty or lower are not unusual in January and February.

Nearby, the battlefield of Koljonvirta, where Finnish and Swedish troops fought Russian forces in 1808, lies just north of the center, and Lapinlahti, with its art museum, is a short drive south.

Sources: Iisalmi - Wikipedia · Olvi - Wikipedia · Digitraffic road traffic data (Fintraffic).