Today the participant phase of the ESSL Testbed 2017 comes to an end. The upcoming months will be dominated by the reporting phase. And soon we will start to prepare the 2018 edition. Dates are already fixed: 11 June to 13 July 2018.

We thank all partners and participants of the ESSL Testbed 2017. Weather was quite interesting this year. And we are very much looking forward to continued and new collaborations for the coming years.

Here two product examples of this year:

Image: EUMETSAT NWCSAF RDT product overlay of yesterday 18 UTC with highlighted cell near Paris (mouse-over cell properties).

Image: DWD COSMO-DE EPS updraft helicity tracks for today 16 UTC: some regions show high signals.

A rare mid-summer cut-off low over the Iberian Peninsula makes it interesting to forecast for Spain (Southwest Domain at the ESSL Testbed) with participants discussing NWC SAF products …

… and NWP outputs in the other room for the day 2 forecast:

Also over the eastern Alps substantial shear can lead to some well-organized storms near the Testbed site. A mobile nowcast team would form during the afternoon, if storms would initiate close enough.

Today’s forecasting teams at the ESSL Testbed discussed several areas with a marginal risk for severe weather for today (France, Italy and Poland/Belarus) and tomorrow (Spain), mainly for the risk of marginally large hail:

This week’s US participant is Darrel Kingfield from NOAA. See what his impressions of the ESSL Testbed were during his previous stay in the year 2014 in an NSSL news article.