A map of the tornado path is now available (click for enlarged view):
Some of the photos show interesting details. Tornado winds blew (towards the viewer) through the gates of this hall or work shop, causing a Bernoulli effect to an internal wall of this building (bent wall on the left side of the image with broken windows). So, even though the roof remained in place in this case, the internal structural damage was significant:
Photo (c) Alois M. Holzer
On Wednesday 8 July 2015 late afternoon a violent tornado struck the Veneto region of northern Italy. One large villa (built in the 18th century) was completely destroyed, several houses suffered severe damage with a few walls collapsed, even more houses lost their complete roof, while many houses suffered significant or at least minor roof damage.
On 11, 12 and 13 July Alois M. Holzer from ESSL investigated this case together with Massimo Enrico Ferrario from the Meteorological Service of ARPA Veneto (preliminary report after the event), Rainer Kaltenberger from ZAMG and Alberto Gobbi from the association Meteonetwork.
The final report needs to be compiled, but a few key figures can already be given (updated on 14 July 2015 :
11.5 km – length of the tornado damage track
700 m – typical width
1000 m – maximum width of tornado damage track
F4 – maximum intensity on the Fujita Scale
A link to the ESWD database with an entry of this event can be found here.
F4 damage to large villa in Mira (VE): brick structure with walls largely blown down. Damage assessment showed aged (and therefore considerably weakened) mortar between the bricks, leading to F4 (instead of F5) rating for this data point. Photo (c) ESSL, Alois M. Holzer
15 August 2015 is the last day with standard registration rates for the ECSS. After this deadline prices will increase by EUR 40.- to EUR 50.-, depending on the category.
Please also note that since 15 June 2015 wired payments cannot be accepted, but only credit card payments.
The Local Organizing Committee asks ECSS participants to book their hotel accommodation as early as possible. This will enhance the chance to get a room in a preferred hotel.
The scientific programme committee of the ECSS was very active during April and May checking all the submitted abstracts. The letters of acceptance were sent out on 28 May to those who submitted abstracts for the conference. The letters of schedule (including the type of presentation – oral or poster) were sent out on 7 June 2015.
The conference will take place in Wiener Neustadt, located just south of Vienna between the Alps and Lake Neusiedl, and easy to reach from Vienna airport. We expect an exciting week that will feature all aspects of severe storms, ranging from their forecasting to climatological aspects and from storm detection by radar and satellite to their impacts.
Confirmed keynote speakers include Greg Carbin (Storm Prediction Center, Norman, OK) and George Bryan (UCAR, Boulder, CO).
On Wednesday, a panel discussion will address the challenges of storm forecasting in Europe.
In addition, there is an extensive programme of social side events. The Local Organizing Committee and the Scientific Programme Committee are looking forward to welcome you in September in Wiener Neustadt.
Although weather wasn’t very cooperative during some days, participants of the ESSL Testbed 2015 were able to test new or even experimental forecasting and warning tools. You can look back to the activities in our Testbed Blog.
General information about this unique facility in Europe can be found here.
To cope with the increasing interest in our ESWD related activities, ESSL issues a job offer for a minijob: “ESWD Key Account Manager”
For details, please refer to this PDF docoment.
Application deadline: 30 April 2015
From 1 to 5 September 2014 ESSL organized a workshop dedicated to the field of forensic meteorology: The first two days were dominated by expert presentations and very active discussions. On Wednesday and Thursday the whole team went to Slovenia and Italy to recent damage sites. Participants split up into four groups, three persons each group, and went into the field in order to assess damage to buildings and trees.
Katrin Pfeifer has studied past severe storms across Europe from a cultural historical viewpoint. The resulting book – in German language – with a focus on events in Austria and in the Netherlands has now become available. For more information, follow this link.
Since May 2014, ESSL is engaged in the new EU-project RAIN. The Lab leads Work Package 2 on “Hazard Identification”. ESSL’s Director Pieter Groenemeijer explains the hazard identification activities in this interview on the project website.
More information is available on the RAIN project website.
The ESSL General Assembly (GA) 2014 took place as a sidemeeting of the 14th European Meteorological Society (EMS) Annual Meeting and the 10th European Conference on Applied Climatology (ECAC) in Prague (Czech Republic) on 8th October 2014. The Annual Report 2013 can be found in the “Publications” section of this webpage. Hans-Joachim Koppert was re-elected as Advisory Councillor for the period 2015 – 2018.