The previous record of 16cm in Carmignano di Brenta from 19
July lasted for only five days. On 24 July 2023 at about 11 PM in the evening,
giant hail hit the town of Azzano Decimo, where the record breaking hailstone
was found. After a thourough examination of the reports and photos, the
specialists of the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD) came to the
conclusion, that the diamter of this hailstone can be confirmed as 19 cm.
The new hailstone comes very close to the world record
of a hailstone from 23 July 2010 in Vivian, South Dakota, with a diameter of 8
inches (20.3 cm).
The high frequence of hail in Northern Italy is consistent
with research results of the European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL),
showing, that this region has experienced the largest increase in the frequency
of large hail, compared to other European regions in the past decades.
At the end, ESSL want to thank its local partners, as PreTemp
in Italy, and the reporters of hail to their great collaboration and
contributions to the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD)!
On 19 July, severe hailstorms affected large parts of
Southern Europe. According to the experts of the European Severe Storms
Laboratory (ESSL) so-called “giant hail” (hailstones with a diameter of
more than 10 cm) was reported 24 times; 2 times in Croatia and 22 times in
Italy!
In Croatia, the largest hailstone was found in Ribnik,
estimated to be 13 cm in diameter. In Italy, the largest hailstone fell in
Carmignano di Brenta. The specialists of the European Severe Weather
Database (ESWD) estimate the size of this hailstone to be 16 cm in
diameter, based on photos.
“According to our information, this would be the largest
recorded hailstone in Europe”, says Thilo Kühne, Quality Control Manager of the
European Severe Weather Database. “The previous record was a 15 cm hailstone from
20 June 2016 in Sânandrei, Romania”.
Besides enormous economic damage, the hail caused 109
injuries on that day alone, according to the European Severe Weather Database.
ESSL obtaining its data from a large European network of
weather entusthiasts and cooperating weather services. The Italian cases,
including the new record braking hailstone, were reported by PreTemp,
which collaborates closely with ESSL.
The experts of ESSL and the European Severe Weather Database
urge all people sending photos to the weather services or our data base, or posting
hail pictures on social media, to use a ruler, coin or other reference objects
next to the hailstones when making a picture. This makes it easier to estimate
the exact size of hailstones.
ESSL was asked by the City of Wiener Neustadt to support a major civil defense exercise for the city and surrounding districts. On July 5th, shortly before the start of the exercise, ESSL Director of Operations Alois Holzer gave a lecture on tornado basics as a prelude for the management team of around 40 officials. The tornado scenario of the exercise concerns urban areas.
Kick-off presentation at civil defense exercise for City of Wiener Neustadt and surroundings on 5 July 2023
Already 10 years ago, ESSL provided the tornado scenario for a similar civil defense exercise. The recent talk gave the participating entities insight into the impacts of violent tornadoes. Part of the presentation was the case of 24 June 2021 over Czechia, when 6 persons died and hundreds were injured in an F4 tornado. Even more people were killed in the historical tornado event of the year 1916, when 34 persons died in another F4 tornado that struck the northern neighborhoods of Wiener Neustadt.
From left to right: Markus Biffl (Head of City Administration Wiener Neustadt), Alois M. Holzer (ESSL Director of Operations), Doris Hailzl (Head civil protection department and main organizer of exercise). Background: situation room for civil defense emergencies.
In June 2023, Méteo-France has become a member of the European Severe Storms Laboratory. This means that they have joined the present 25 Institutional Members of ESSL: public or non-profit organizations in Europe active in the realm of weather and climate forecasting or related fields. The ESSL Team extends a warm welcome to Météo-France, which will now have full access to the European Severe Weather Database to support its activities. In addition, full ESSL members have a vote in ESSL’s General Assembly and benefit from reduced participation rates in ESSL activities. ESSL is looking forward to the cooperation with Météo-France.
On the occasion of the first EUMETSAT-ESSL Testbed in 2023, the mayor of the city of Wiener Neustadt, Klaus Schneeberger, and the head of the governmental science department of the Federal State of Lower Austria, Martina Höllbacher, paid a visit to ESSL this week.
From left to right: Alois M. Holzer (Director of Operations, ESSL); Martina Höllbacher (Head of Science, Federal State of Lower Austria); Klaus Schneeberger (Mayor, City of Wiener Neustadt)
ESSL staff informed the officials on the anticipated advances in connection with the new satellite generation (EUMETSAT MTG). Our guests have been impressed by the variety of impactful activities the small ESSL team has undertaken over the past years, as documented by scientific posters and by the growing list of events, ranging from testbeds and seminars to expert workshops.
The official visit took place on 8 June 2023. The next day, a science journalist from the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) visited our ESSL Research and Training Centre to interview participants and prepare a report on the EUMETSAT-ESSL Testbed and its importance for operational meteorologists in Europe. This week, participants from 15 different countries are taking part, from Ireland to Turkey, and from Portugal to Finland.
ESSL and collaborators drafted a document on the “International Fujita Scale” (IF-Scale). It defines a new method to rate tornado and wind damage and was presented at the European Conference on Severe Storms in Bucharest, Romania, earlier this month.
The document is open for commenting until 31 May 2023. ESSL plans to implement the new scale in the European Severe Weather Database by 1 July 2023.
More information on the IF-Scale draft you can find here.
The workshop is scheduled for autumn, from 16 to 18 October 2023, and takes the very broad view. Target audience are forecasters (“warners”) and heads of forecasters, researchers and practicioners related to warnings, civil protection authorities, and end users of warnings (especially from critical infrastructure).
The following topics will be covered:
The broad
multidisciplinary view: risk ethics (philosophy, moral reasoning), human
behaviour (psychology) and legal frameworks (just) in the context of the
warning process
Limitations
and new prospects for ingredients-based warning approaches: How should the risk
matrix be defined? Can more life be brought to forecasting impacts beyond the
marketing term?
Communication
– dealing with uncertainty: Why is there so little progress in communicating
the warning uncertainty, and how can this be improved?
Action
advice and public education: from understanding to response and action. We are
seeking for good practice examples.
General
and tailored warnings: What are the necessary differences? And how can the gaps
between warners, emergency managements and end users be best bridged?
From
physical ingredients to impact warnings: Are impacts in high-end meteorological
events easier to predict and stronger tied to the physical magnitude than in
more frequent and modest events?
A critical
moment in the meteorological sphere: transition from forecasting to nowcasting
and the resulting potential sudden jump in probability of extremely rare
events. Should there be a stronger focus on the warning means in the “last
hour”? When in time and at which probability and intensity threshold should
sirens and other “strongly interrupting and potentially also frightening” means
of warning be used?
Cross-institutional
and cross-border communication: What is needed to ensure the flow of relevant
information in extremely time-critical and high workload situations?
Warners at work at the EUMETSAT-ESSL Testbed 2022
A detailled invitation can be downloaded here (PDF).
The registration for the 11th European Conference on Severe Storms is open and normal registration fees apply until 7 April. Starting 8 April, late registration fees do apply.
Please register here for on-site participation or online streaming (remote presentations are not foreseen).
General information on the ECSS including the scientific and social programme can be found here.
This webinar features key 2022 results from the joint
ESSL-EUMETSAT activity introducing MTG data to operational weather forecasters
in Europe. ESSL trainers describe highlights of severe convective weather cases
that were analysed by forecasters during the testbeds in Wiener Neutstadt.
Forecasters provide testimonials on their testbed experience and the importance
of satellite products in the forecasting process. In addition, the ESSL expert
workshops put the spotlight on novel MTG products such as the 0.9um FCI channel
to detect low-level moisture, or the Lightning imager. The audience will learn
about key take-aways from these workshops, for later use in training on MTG for
all users.
The Nikolai
Dotzek Award goes to three meteorologists with focus on satellite studies. The most prestigious award in the
global severe weather research community is presented every second year in the
memory of ESSL’s founding father, Dr. Nikolai Dotzek, for an outstanding
contribution to the science of severe storms.
As the new generation of satellites in Europe, the United States, and Japan have been launched, their increased capabilities in terms of available channels and resolution will allow for better nowcasting of severe convective storms. It is a good time to acknowledge those who have contributed significantly to our understanding of the processes that occur on top of the convective storms, how they relate to storm severity, and how they can be operationally detected. ESSL presents the 2023 Nikolai Dotzek Award to three scientists who have strongly pushed satellite meteorology forward.
Pao Wang
The first awardee
is Prof. Pao-Kuan Wang, who has used very high-resolution cloud models to
simulate the processes at the top of convective storms. Simulations showed that
overshooting tops act as obstacles to the anvil-relative wind. Thus, most of
the storm top features that we observe from a satellite, such as cold rings,
cold-Us, above-anvil cirrus plumes, storm-top gravity waves or ship wave
patterns result from the interaction between overshooting tops and the ambient
flow. Wang has also shown that some of these features result from internal
gravity wave breaking processes, consequently contributing to lower
stratospheric moistening. Wang was, until recently, director of the Research
Center for Environmental Changes of the Academia Sinica and formerly professor
at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Numerical simulation of a supercell showing the development of above-anvil cirrus plume as an example work of Pao Wang.
Martin Setvák
The second awardee is Dr. Martin Setvák, who in the late 1980’s described various forms of increased 3.7 micron cloud top reflectivity of convective storms and discussed its possible link to storm severity and updraft strength. Later he elaborated this concept with Dr. Charles A. Doswell. Together with Dr. Vincenzo Levizanni, Setvák formulated a concept of above-anvil cirrus plumes above convective storms on satellite imagery. He also contributed to the categorization of various storm-top phenomena, such as cold rings, closely collaborating on these topics with Prof. Pao K. Wang. Setvák is the father of the so-called “sandwich imagery”, a combination of infrared and visible channels, which is now in widespread use across the world. Martin Setvák has formally retired but still works part-time at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (CHMI).
NOAA-9 AVHRR imagery of an extremely severe hailstorm on 18 August 1986 over central Czechia clearly shows an above-anvil cirrus plume. This was one of the first storms of which the presence of the plume was noted by Martin Setvák.
Kris Bedka
The third awardee is Kristopher Bedka, who together with his team made significant strides toward the automation of the detection of both overshooting tops and above-anvil cirrus plumes. Using large records of these phenomena and their properties, Bedka investigated their statistical relationships with severe weather beneath them. His recent work concentrated on the automatic detection of high ice water content in deep convective storms, adversely impacting aircraft engine and air probe performance. He demonstrated the utility of 1-min super rapid scanning for analysis of satellite-observed cloud properties. His ongoing work expands towards wind profiling with an airborne doppler aerosol lidar – to only mention one of several fields of activity – and offers great promises for nowcasting and improving severe storms climatologies. Kris Bedka is affiliated with the NASA Langley Research Center.
An example from Kris Bedka’s work: Above-anvil cirrus plumes at the top of severe convective storms over Argentina on 8 February 2018. The northern one produced hail exceeding 18 cm.
The Nikolai Dotzek
Award trophy represents a massive hailstone. The prize money is 1000 EUR
together with an invitation to the European Conference on Severe Storms (ECSS).
The award was instigated by the European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) in
2011. The handing over of the award trophy usually crowns the dinner of the
ECSS conference and will take place this year in Bucharest, Romania, on the
10th of May.
Nikolai Dotzek Award trophy
The ESSL aims to contribute to the preparedness of European society for the impacts of severe storms by advancing scientific understanding, building human capacity, and fostering cooperation within Europe in this field.
ESSL provides training to forecasters, scientists, and policymakers on topics related to convective weather. ESSL participates in research projects and organizes the European Conference on Severe Storms to improve and stimulate the exchange of knowledge on severe convection. ESSL aims to establish and maintain close relationships with national weather services and research institutes to strengthen pan-European collaborations. ESSL maintains the European Severe Weather Database, to support research based on observations of severe convective weather or any related impact.
You can download a PDF document of this content here.
More information on the Nikolai Dotzek Award can be found here.
