Abstract
Abstract The tornado outbreak of 24–25 June 1967 was the most damaging in the history of western Europe, producing 7 F2–F5 tornadoes, 232 injuries, and 15 fatalities across France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Following tornadoes in France on 24 June, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) issued a tornado forecast for 25 June, which became the first ever—and first verified—tornado forecast in Europe. Fifty-two years later, tornadoes are still not usually forecast by most European national meteorological services, and a pan-European counterpart to the NOAA/NWS/Storm Prediction Center (SPC) does not exist to provide convective outlook guidance; yet, tornadoes remain an extant threat. This article asks, “What would a modern-day forecast of the 24–25 June 1967 outbreak look like?” To answer this question, a model simulation of the event is used in three ways: 20-km grid-spacing output to produce a SPC-style convective outlook provided by the European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX), 800-m grid-spacing output to analyze simulated reflectivity and surface winds in a nowcasting analog, and 800-m grid-spacing output to produce storm-total footprints of updraft helicity maxima to compare to observed tornado tracks. The model simulates a large supercell on 24 June and weaker embedded mesocyclones on 25 June forming along a stationary front, allowing the ESTOFEX outlooks to correctly identify the threat. Updraft helicity footprints indicate multiple mesocyclones on both days within 40–50 km and 3–4 h of observed tornado tracks, demonstrating the ability to hindcast a large European tornado outbreak.
Highlights
The first known tornado forecast in Europe occurred on 25 June 1967 when meteorologists from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) recognized that, following several tornadoes upstream over northern France on 24 June, the synoptic pattern was not changing overnight
Modern European severe weather and tornado forecasts are still not produced in the same way and with the same public awareness as convective weather forecasts are in the United States (Doswell 2003; Rauhala and Schultz 2009; Doswell 2015; Miglietta and Rotunno 2016; Miglietta et al 2017)
The control simulation produced severe storms near the actual storm reports, except no plausible simulated convection formed near the actual tornado in Argoules. Based on this model output, it would be harder to make a good tornado forecast or nowcast using the rotation tracks for 25 June compared to 24 June as the updraft helicity values were smaller, despite the environment being favorable on both days
Summary
Modern European severe weather and tornado forecasts are still not produced in the same way and with the same public awareness as convective weather forecasts are in the United States (Doswell 2003; Rauhala and Schultz 2009; Doswell 2015; Miglietta and Rotunno 2016; Miglietta et al 2017) This mentality persists even in the face of rising evidence of the risk of convective storms in general, and tornadic storms in particular, to European nations (Antonescu et al 2017). Organizations such as the European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL; Groenemeijer et al 2017) and European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX; http://www.estofex.org) exist, they are independent and not tied to any specific countries or weather services.
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