The ESSL Testbed 2017 welcomes all participants of this years’ edition.
We are proud to present you again an interesting selection of leading-edge forecasting and warning tools. New this year are for example a number of products from the EUMETSAT Nowcasting SAF.
Pieter Groenemeijer and Tomas Pucik observing high precipitation storms at lunchtime in Wiener Neustadt on the day before the testbed starts.
COSMO-E predicts a very high probability for extreme precip amounts in the Valais and Ticino area of southern Switzerland for Thursday late evening.
Maximum projection of all ensemble members showing maximum 12 h precip sums of locally more than 200 mm.
Point by point probability for rain sums larger than 70 mm: around 80 % in some places.
Fraction of members exceeding the threshold of 70 mm in a 40 by 40 km square. Nearly all members for this timestep predict excessive rainfall in south-central Switzerland.
ESSL Testbed severe weather briefing for the upcoming days with public online access via fmi.sabameeting.com starting at 09:00 UTC. Presenters today: Tomas Pucik and Pieter Groenemeijer
Thanks to EUMETCAL the Testbed online severe weather briefings (Tue-Fri starting at 09:00 UTC) and expert lectures can be followed remotely by many meteorologists from all over Europe and beyond.
Here you can see the list of online sessions. Click an event to join. You need to register with your email address – it’s for free!
Last Saturday unorganized convection was dominating in a low-shear environment, but a few cells became severe and some of them produced large hail according to the ESWD. One outstanding development occured in the border region of the southernmost Netherlands and neighbouring Germany.
Interestingly, COSMO DE-EPS produced nearly perfect forecasts of this development in three consecutive initialization times (see example for 06 UTC model initiation):
Supercell Detection Index (maximum SDI of all ensemble members) for 14 UTC
Fraction of 20 ensemble members exceeding a threshold for the SDI: more than 90 % in the correct 40×40 km box, while the rest of the domain was correctly modelled free of such an intense development.
High resolution visible satellite and radar overlay of reflectivity and Mesocyclone Detections at 14:05 UTC.
An interesting example for the potential of high resolution ensembles that we found in the very first hours of this years’ Testbed.
