In this first week participants from 7 different countries are on site (Austria, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, Latvia, Switzerland and Poland).

In the morning Pieter Gronemeijer discussed all the available products in the Testbed display and outlined new nowcasting and NWP tools at this Testbed edition. A “roaming sounding” tool allows for model sounding analyses “on the fly”.

Like last year, with support of EUMETCAL remote participants are able to attend the Testbed’s online weather briefings and expert presentations. The first lecture was given by Prof. David Schulz from Manchester University: “Scientific Forecasting: How to Be a Better Forecaster?”.

Then the daily weather briefing was conducted by Georg Pistotnik. The atmosphere did not know any mercy and confronted the participants of the first Testbed week with a challenging start: no obvious hot spot for severe storms. However, participants managed to find places where deep moist convection is likely to occur. A level 1 was issued! How good were these predictions? It will turn out tomorrow in the verification session.

First interesting day in ESSL Science and Training Centre ended at 17:30. In the evening participants were given the opportunity to discover Wiener Neustadt on the guided tour.