Abstract
Abstract. Extremely rare events with high potential impact, such as violent tornadoes, are of strong interest for climatology and risk assessment. In order to obtain more knowledge about the most extreme events, it is vital to study historical cases. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to demonstrate how a windstorm catastrophe that happened 100 years ago, such as the Wiener Neustadt, Lower Austria, tornado on 10 July 1916, can be successfully re-analyzed using a forensic approach, and (2) to propose a repeatable working method for assessing damage and reconstructing the path and magnitude of local windstorm and tornado cases with sufficient historical sources. Based on the results of the forensic re-analyses, a chronology of the tornado impact is presented, followed by a description of the key tornado characteristics: a maximum intensity rating of F4, a damage path length of 20 km and a maximum visible tornado diameter of 1 km. Compared to a historical scientific study published soon after the event, additional new findings are presented, namely the existence of two predecessor tornadoes and a higher number of fatalities: at least 34 instead of 32. While the storm-scale meteorology could not be reconstructed, rich damage data sources for the urban area of Wiener Neustadt facilitated a detailed analysis of damage tracks and wind intensities within the tornado. The authors postulate the requirement for an International Fujita Scale to rate tornadoes globally in a consistent way, based on comparable damage indicators.
Highlights
Introduction and motivationPrior research on historical tornadoes mainly focused on climatological analyses of pre-analyzed cases or preexistent datasets: Snitkovskii (1987) for Russia, Dessens and Snow (1989) for France, Holzer (2001) for Austria, Brázdil et al (2012) for the Czech Republic, Brown and Rowe (2012) and Brown et al (2013a, b) for Great Britain, or Taszarek and Gromadzki (2017) for Poland. Gayà (2007) discussed the 1886 Madrid tornado, van der Schrier and Groenland (2017) the extreme wind damage of 1 August 1674 from northern France to northern Holland
A surprisingly high number of both damage photographs and damage reports was found in historical archives
Along uninhabited parts of the damage track, open questions remain, especially regarding the formation of the main tornado that struck the town of Wiener Neustadt
Summary
Introduction and motivationPrior research on historical tornadoes mainly focused on climatological analyses of pre-analyzed cases or preexistent datasets: Snitkovskii (1987) for Russia, Dessens and Snow (1989) for France, Holzer (2001) for Austria, Brázdil et al (2012) for the Czech Republic, Brown and Rowe (2012) and Brown et al (2013a, b) for Great Britain, or Taszarek and Gromadzki (2017) for Poland. Gayà (2007) discussed the 1886 Madrid tornado, van der Schrier and Groenland (2017) the extreme wind damage of 1 August 1674 from northern France to northern Holland. Prior research on historical tornadoes mainly focused on climatological analyses of pre-analyzed cases or preexistent datasets: Snitkovskii (1987) for Russia, Dessens and Snow (1989) for France, Holzer (2001) for Austria, Brázdil et al (2012) for the Czech Republic, Brown and Rowe (2012) and Brown et al (2013a, b) for Great Britain, or Taszarek and Gromadzki (2017) for Poland. In the case of the 1916 Wiener Neustadt tornado, both written reports and a few damage photographs of the severe windstorm event were already known prior to this study. While contemporary knowledge did not allow for estimations of the maximum intensity of a windstorm or tornado based on damage, this is feasible due to significant advances in the areas of severe convective storms and tornadoes, building aerodynamics, and structural analysis
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