Matt Parker from North Carolina State University in Raleigh today presented the outlook for day 2 and the following days at today’s 9 UTC severe weather briefing:

There is an elevated risk for severe weather outbrakes in Central Europe next week. See ECMWF IFS forecast for Wednesday as an example with high CAPE high shear present in many places:

Both for today and tomorrow forecaster teams went for a level 2:

Today there is a threat for tornadoes, extreme winds, very large hail in large parts of central, north and eastern Germany and during night even into western Poland.

Latest radar and lightning detection derived products underline the severe storms threat.

Lightning density tracks with some jumps in lightning density (yellow) along the track:
Low level rotation tracks and mesocyclone detections:

VIL tracks with some values up to 100 kg/m²:

Tomorrow the main threat is large hail and extreme winds over large areas of central-eastern Europe:

Sometimes our presenters are not in the Testbed room, but online – like in this case Ulrich Blahak, COSMO-DE developer from DWD:

COSMO-DE was constantly improved over the past years.

On day 2 Tomas Pucik was discussing surface moisture overestimation of GFS compared to the other models:

Still in other models there is some potential for severe convective storms over GB tomorrow, but initiation is uncertain until early evening. In some regions nicely curved hodographs are present:

A multinational team of developers and forecasters (France, Spain, Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Czechia, Netherlands, USA, Croatia and Austria) started activities for another testbed week. During the week different interesting weather situations are expected in different areas of Europe.

Image: Discussion during the morning in the day 1 forecast group.

Late evening storms over SW France and N Spain in the testbed visualization of the RDT (rapid developping thunderstorm) product from EUMETSAT NWC-SAF and MeteoFrance:

 RDT product screenshot: growing cells with red borders, mature cells with magenta. Mouse-over function provides a selection of additional cell properties.

Here one of the new products from DWD to be tested this year:

The DWD COSMO DE EPS visualization of the “condensate in column below -10 degrees Celsius 1 hour track” shows interesting signals to be verified later today over Germany.

This first week of the ESSL Testbed was a very fruitful one, also because of the weather setups that we have experienced. The testbed will have a break of one week now and will be back on 19 June for additional 3 weeks.

Today’s forecasting team for day 1 found a significant threat for severe weather over western Turkey in the coming hours: level 2 there.

Here is what their experimental Testbed forecast says:

Day 1 Forecast

Valid: Thu 08 Jun 2017 09:00 to Fri 09 Jun 2017 06:00 UTC

Issued: Thu 08 Jun 2017 08:53

Forecaster: ESSL TESTBED

A level 2 was issued across W Turkey mainly for large hail and to lesser extend isolated tornadoes, severe wind gusts and extreme rainfall.

A level 1 was issued across Bulgaria, Greece and soroundings for large hail and extreme rainfall.

DISCUSSION

Turkey

Approaching trough from the Mediterranean push a strong southwesterly mid level jet into W-Turkey. Large scale lift/height falls expected. Broad overlap of a steep lapse rate and low level moisture as indicated by the latest observations will create a favorable environment for initiation in the afternoon hours. First storms are expected over the mountains. Strong deep layer sheer and favorably veering profiles supports supercells (deep layer sheer ~ 20 m/s or more). First stroms are capable of producing very large hail (5 cm), later on highest storm coverage poses of threat of large hail and locally excessive precipitation and severe windgusts. In the evening increasing low level sheer can be sufficient for a few tornadoes as well.

Image: Interesting EUMETSAT NWCSAF product for today. Discussion showed that there is substantial moisture available not only in the typical very thin mediterranean coastal layer, but also inland over western Turkey with ongoing advection from the south (green to yellow to orange colours in the precipitable water product).

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The team forecasting for yesterday was quite pleased (not in terms of damage, but in terms of forecast quality) with the verification of their forecast. The same is true for the team perfectly nowcasting a tornado in northern Italy:

This afternoon teams are busy with the evaluation of NWCSAF and DWD products.

Today’s day 1 forecast (valid until Wed 06 UTC) – made by a team at the ESSL Testbed – foresees a considerable risk for severe weather:

There will be interesting and very active Nowcasting sessions this afternoon.

You can follow our daily activities via regular online sessions during the testbed period:

Tue – Thu at 9 UTC: Online severe weather briefings and daily expert lecture.
Fri at 9 UTC: Severe weather online briefing only.

At the online meeting times you can join us here in WebEX with the session number “953 698 353” and the password “testbed”. This service is kindly provided by EUMETCAL.