Abstract A case study of a south foehn windstorm observed across the Brenner Pass in the Wipp Valley near the Austrian–Italian border is presented based on a detailed comparison and verification of high-resolution numerical simulations with observations. The event of 24 through 25 October 1999 was part of the Intensive Observing Period 10 of the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP). The simulations were performed with the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5). The observations were collected with a ground-based scanning Doppler lidar, an airborne aerosol backscatter lidar, a Doppler sodar, several weather stations, and two radiosounding systems. The study provides a synoptic-scale and mesoscale overview of the event and focuses on a comparison of simulated and observed fields for a 9-h period on 24 October 1999. The quantitative agreement between the numerical results and the observations is discussed in terms of root-mean-square error (rmse) and mean error (ME). Rmse value...