Scientists in Norway left completely baffled by freak storm that dumps 100mm of rain in one hour

More than 10cm of rain fell on a Norwegian village – an amount rarely seen outside the jungle

The downpour is believed to have smashed all records for Norway (Getty) (Getty)

Scientists in Norway have been left baffled by a storm at the edge of the Arctic Circle that dumped more than 10cm of rain on a village in a single hour.

More than 100mm of rain fell on the Norwegian village of Ogndal, an amount rarely seen outside the tropical rainforests of Brazil or Indonesia.

The downpour, which left farm animals petrified and meteorologists scratching their heads, is believed to have shattered records for the area, the Local has reported.

More than a month’s rain fell in 60 minutes and the precipitation more than doubled a record-breaking storm in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, last summer.

Government meteorologist Geir Ottar Fagerli told national broadcaster NRK: “This just does not happen in Norway, we have a hard time believing that it’s true.

“It’s not that we doubt the observations, but it is absolutely amazing. These are figures that you only normally see in the jungle.”

The torrential rain ripped deep gullies in the earth (Kristin Wåtland Delbekk)

An estimated 102mm of rain bucketed down in an hour, followed by hail that left a layer of ice across the area.

The area, about 80 miles north of Trondheim, has no official monitoring stations, but Fagerli said it was almost certainly a record. The unofficial record for the country is believed to be between 80 and 90mm in an hour.

Kristin Wåtland Delbekk, a farmer and tourist guide who has lived in the village for 28 years said that she had never seen anything like it.

She told the Local: "It was horrible. There was such a lot of rain in one hour. It was so strange for us. The animals were really afraid, the cows don’t understand what was happening."

On average, 74mm of rain falls in the area in July.

Flooding hit Oslo after 44.5mm of rain fell in an hour last June, smashing the 1937 record of 41.5mm.

The most rainfall ever recorded in one hour was 305mm in 42 minutes in Holt, Missouri, in the US, in 1947.