A Challenging Tornado Forecast in Slovakia

Šinger, Miroslav; Púčik, Tomáš

doi:10.3390/atmos11080821

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Such environments are typically responsible for severe weather outbreaks during the cold season (Mathias et al., 2019; Sherburn & Parker, 2014; Sherburn et al., 2016; van den Broeke et al., 2005) and are often accompanied by a strong synoptic‐scale lift (as was the case in 2008). HSLC tornadoes can occur both within supercell and non‐supercell small scale mesovortices and their operational forecasting is very challenging (Anderson‐Frey et al., 2016, 2017; Davis & Parker, 2014; Šinger & Púčik, 2020).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstruction of Violent Tornado Environments in Europe: High‐Resolution Dynamical Downscaling of ERA5

Pilguj

Taszarek

Kryza

et al. 2022

Geophysical Research Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Approximately 1–3 violent tornadoes hit Europe each decade. We use the ERA5 reanalysis and WRF model to reconstruct environments for 12 cases between 1957 and 2021. Violent tornadoes in Europe occur in a variety of synoptic and mesoscale patterns, but they share environmental similarities with significant tornadoes from the United States. Downscaling simulations to 3 km grid‐spacing showed the added value of improved resolution in representing local convective environments. In 8 out of 12 simulations, the model indicated updraft helicity (UH) tracks in a favorable convective environment in spatial (+/−50 km) and temporal (+/−3 hr) proximity to the tornado report. Tornadoes were accompanied by a mean 0–6 km wind shear of 24.3 m s−1 and mean convective available potential energy of 1678 J kg−1. The combination of UH tracks with convective environments offers promising results for operational forecasting in Europe, and should be explored in future studies.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstruction of Violent Tornado Environments in Europe: High‐Resolution Dynamical Downscaling of ERA5

Pilguj

Taszarek

Kryza

et al. 2022

Geophysical Research Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Spatial distribution and precipitation intensity of supercells: Response to terrain asymmetry in the Western Carpathians, Central Europe

Kvak

Okon

Bližňák

et al. 2023

Atmospheric Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Strong tornadoes are common for the European part of Russia but happen rather rare east of the Urals. June 2017 became an exceptional month when two tornado outbreaks occurred in the Ural region of Russia, yielded $3 million damage, and resulted in 1 fatality and 14 injuries. In this study, we performed detailed analysis of these outbreaks with different data. Tornadoes and tornado-related environments were diagnosed with news and eyewitness reports, ground-based meteorological observations, sounding data, global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models data, synoptic charts, satellite images, and data of specially conducted aerial imaging. We also estimated the accuracy of short-term forecasting of outbreaks with the WRF-ARW mesoscale atmospheric model, which was run in convection-permitting mode. We determined the formation of 28 tornadoes during the first outbreak (3 June 2017) and 9 tornadoes during the second outbreak (18 June 2017). We estimated their intensity using three different approaches and confirmed that, based on the International Fujita scale (IF), one of the tornadoes had the IF4 intensity, being the first IF4 tornado in Russia in the 21st century and the first-ever IF4 tornado reported beyond the Ural Mountains. The synoptic-scale analysis revealed the similarity of two outbreaks, which both formed near the polar front in the warm part of deepening southern cyclones. Such synoptic conditions yield mostly weak tornadoes in European Russia; however, our analysis indicates that these conditions are likely favorable for strong tornadoes over the Ural region. Meso-scale analysis indicates that the environments were favorable for tornado formation in both cases, and most severe-weather indicators exceeded their critical values. Our analysis demonstrates that for the Ural region, like for other regions of the world, combined use of the global NWP model outputs indicating high values of severe-weather indices and the WRF model forecast outputs explicitly simulating tornadic storm formation could be used to predict the high probability of strong tornado formation. For both analyzed events, the availability of such tornado warning forecast could help local authorities to take early actions on population protection.

show abstract

A Challenging Tornado Forecast in Slovakia

Cited by 4 publications

References 47 publications

Reconstruction of Violent Tornado Environments in Europe: High‐Resolution Dynamical Downscaling of ERA5

Reconstruction of Violent Tornado Environments in Europe: High‐Resolution Dynamical Downscaling of ERA5

Spatial distribution and precipitation intensity of supercells: Response to terrain asymmetry in the Western Carpathians, Central Europe

Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About