Societal impacts of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes: lessons learned and implications for Europe

Abstract

It is well known that the United States has the greatest number of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes of any nation worldwide. Therefore, in the United States, a substantial infrastructure has evolved in response to the numerous natural hazards (not limited to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes) in an effort to reduce the societal impacts of these hazards. In addition to keeping records of the events, there are state and national programs (public and private) to help reduce the economic and social impacts on local communities that might otherwise have to prepare for severe storms and rebuild using only the limited local resources. This paper reviews the basics of the infrastructure that has been developed to deal with severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, and describes its history briefly, as well as considering some of its successes and problems. Although the American system should not be used as a simple template for Europe, it does need to be considered as Europe begins to address how to deal with the unique character of European severe storm hazards. Given that severe thunderstorm and tornado event frequencies are generally lower in Europe, as well as the smaller areas of individual European nations, each country has a correspondingly low annual event frequency, especially for the rare “high end” events that have the potential create major disasters. Collectively, however, the severe weather threat is almost certainly larger for Europe as a whole than most Europeans realize. Any decision concerning the phenomena that will be considered “severe weather” in Europe needs to be made in a purely European context. It is suggested that severe weather is best dealt with as the pan-European hazard it truly represents. Pan-European severe weather forecasting and research centers are proposed and issues that will need to be confronted are reviewed.