Tornado Outbreak in Northern Germany 27/3/2006

[P.K.]

Freak German tornado hits Hamburg, killing two
27 Mar 2006 20:06:17 GMT
Source: Reuters
BERLIN, March 27 (Reuters) - A rare tornado wreaked havoc in the northern German city of Hamburg on Monday, tearing the roofs off houses, overturning cars and killing two people, authorities said. The southern district of Harburg was hardest hit by the violent storm, which knocked down three cranes at a construction site, killing two operators, a police spokeswoman said. Two others at the site also suffered injuries, she added.

The whirlwind overturned several cars and trucks and one company building had its entire roof stripped off, local fire services said. Damage to power masts left parts of the city, including a hospital, without electricity.

The tornado caused serious traffic hold-ups in the area, as well as disruptions to rail services. Police said it was too early to estimate the cost of the damage.

In June 2004, two small villages in eastern Germany suffered extensive damage when a tornado tore through them, wrecking houses and leaving hundreds of people with no power.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27781549.htm

[Aquawind]

OMG, I can hardly beleive this.. I was freezing my AXX off over there not 2 weeks ago..all week long. I guess the warm air moved in when I left because it was real cold throughout the area...

Paul

[P.K.]

This cell appears to have had a persistent mesocyclone (Germany appears to have doppler radar unlike us) and from the reports look like this was fairly strong. Here is the earlier ESTOFEX forecast.

STORM FORECAST - UPDATE
VALID Mon 27 Mar 14:00 - Tue 28 Mar 06:00 2006 (UTC)
ISSUED: 27 Mar 14:21 (UTC)
FORECASTER: TUSCHY/GROENEMEIJER

A threat level 1 is forecast across northern and western Germany, most of the Benelux countries and a part of northern France

SYNOPSIS

refer to the latest storm forecast

DISCUSSION

...Benelux, northern and western Germany, northern France...
12Z soundings show strong shear under the 500 hPa jet over northern and western France, the Benelux and into northern Germany. A couple of strong storms, some of which likely contain rotating updrafts, have developed over the Netherlands and Belgium and move into northwestern Germany. Other storms are present across Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In the next 3 hours, more storms are expected to develop across northern and central Germany, the Benelux and northern France. They will pose a continuing threat of large hail and gusts that may exceed the severe limit of 25 m/s. Some threat of tornadoes will exist where low-level winds have backed ahead of mesoscale troughs to produce rather high amounts of storm-relative helicity.

At this moment, relatively backed winds over central Niedersachsen and an ongoing supercell storm near Meppen indicate that an enhanced potential for tornadoes probably exists there as well. Additionally, pressure falls in a line rougly from Metz to Brussels, indicate that another trough with backed wind ahead of it may be forming.

Centre point of the convective activity is expected to translate southeastward during the evening. Decreasing values of instability will mean that the severe threat should decrease after sunset.

http://www.estofex.org

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Wow that is strange. How often does this occurr there? And in Spring no less

[P.K.]

Video footage of some damage.

[url]http://www.tagesschau.de/video/0,1315,OID5373660_RES_NAV_BAB,00.html
[/url]

I've got a paper which estimates 30 per year over land and up to 25 per year over water. http://www.tordach.org/pdf/ecss02s.pdf Remember not everywhere is the same as the USA though when it comes to a tornado cliamtology and I'm not sure of when tornadoes are historically found to occur in Germany.

[Aslkahuna]

Actually European tornadoes are more common than one would think. In fact, per unit area the UK gets more tornadoes than anyone in the World though most are small cold air funnel type tornadoes in mPk airmasses like the ones that occur in CA. When I was in Germany in the 1970's we had a number of tornadoes including one that kill one person in a campground on the North Sea Coast and we would see some really nasty squallines come across from France in the Summer. While I was there there were also some damaging tornadoes in France and one that came off the Bay and rolled into Naples Italy.

Steve

[P.K.]

I've just finish my BSc Meteorology dissertation on UK Tornadoes from 1980-2004. We do get rather a lot yes.

[Aslkahuna]

Actually, when one considers that Germany is about the size of Oregon and the same latitude as British Columbia and southern Alaska, 25 tornadoes/yr is a pretty substantial number. The tornado fatality I was thinking about in northern Germany occurred in 1973. On another board there is a map showing F3's and F4's that have occurred in Germany that they have records of.

Steve

[Hurricaneman]

And to think, this tornado happened in one of the rarest areas tornado wise

[Aslkahuna]

That's the point we are trying to make-tornadoes in Europe are not all that rare.

Steve

[P.K.]

If you look at tornadoes over land in Germany and the USA per 10,000km^2 the figures for the two countries are very similar.

[CrazyC83]

They are not uncommon in Europe, but generally much weaker due to the fact that there isn't the air mass collision effect to the degree of the US, particularly in the Central states. You won't normally see F4 or F5 tornadoes in Europe - from damage reports, I'd say that the Hamburg tornado was an F2.

[P.K.]

To be fair you don't get many of those in the USA either. The initial report in the European Severe Weather Database is a T4/F2.

[Aslkahuna]

The US gets over 1000 reported tornadoes/yr Country wide of which about 1% are F4 or stronger or about 10+ per year which isn't really that high of a number. In terms of percent of observed tornadoes that are F4 or higher, Bangladesh and other tornado prone areas of SE Asia probably get a higher percent than the US.

Steve

[HurricaneBill]

Has an F5 ever been observed outside the U.S.?

[Aslkahuna]

I believe so but I'll have to check.

Steve

[P.K.]

Has an F5 ever been observed outside the U.S.?

Certainly. T10 is within the F5 classification used in the USA.

Across the continent, a number of tornadoes are believed to have reached T10 - although it is always difficult to rate violent tornadoes, especially those at the upper end of the category. Violent (T8-T11) tornadoes have occurred in many countries, although only a few nations have experienced a T10. However, two tornadoes are rated T10-11 with the upper category implying windspeeds close to the 500 km h-1 (311 mi h-1) mark. On August 19, 1845, a violent T10-11 tornado devastated Montville (Seine-et-Maritime) in France. Sources give conflicting information as this lunch-time tornado travelled 15 or 30 km, was 100 or 300 m wide and killed 70 & injured 130 or (less probable) killed 200 people. At a similar time of day on July 24, 1930, the Treviso-Udine area (Veneto / Friuli-Venezia Giulia) of Italy was devastated by a 80 km long T10-11 tornado, which claimed 22 or 23 lives.

http://www.torro.org.uk/TORRO/research/whirlextreme.php

[ORKAN]

Has an F5 ever been observed outside the U.S.?

Tornado occurred on 20 July 1931. near Lublin Poland varied between 110 and 145 m/s (246 - 324 mph !!) Estimated damge path - 20 km (trail overturned, houses lifted off foundations)

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

I'm quite surprised honestly. I never new that Germany could have a tornado LOL

[Aslkahuna]

They can occur all over. I even have a shot of a tornado in the Philippines posted on a web site.

Steve