Southern Norway came under battering on Thursday by a gale-force storm from the North Sea, with transportation services disrupted and power supply to thousands of homes cut.

At the Sola airport, which is near the Norwegian oil city of Stavanger, both departure and arrival flights were either postponed or cancelled due to bad weather conditions. Thousands of passengers were stranded at the airport.

A SAS flight from Norway's capital city of Oslo had to wait on the runway for over an hour before it took off for Bergen, a major Norwegian port city on the west coast.

Dozens of highways and an unspecified number of mountain passes were closed in southern Norwegian counties including Hordaland and Rogaland.

Ferries, both domestic and international, were forced to reschedule their services.

Much of Stavanger was deserted by motorists, pedestrians and shoppers as police urged residents to remain indoor. In Bergen, people were asked by authorities to do the same.

A local ice hockey match between Loerenskog and Stavanger was postponed to Friday.

In several areas of the West Agder county, 14,000 homes and company offices were left without power supply on Thursday.

A 40-meter-high tower on an oil base in Hordaland fell onto the ground and no one was injured.

Police received about 50 reports of damage blamed on the storm.

A landslide was reported near Goensdal in Hordaland.

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