Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK - U.S.A.
Although it is certainly true that North America (and especially the United States) has more severe thunderstorm and tornado activity than anywhere else in the world, this does not mean that such events don't occur elsewhere. In fact, Europe has a long history of severe thunderstorm and tornado occurrences, and some of these have proven to be devastating. There is little doubt that European events are less frequent than in the United States, but the true frequency is also underestimated and sometimes perceived to be nonexistent, owing to the common belief that such events "don't happen here". Across Europe, nations have not developed any substantial infrastructure even to maintain accurate records of storm events, apparently owing to this erroneous belief. Low event frequency and the associated lack of infrastructure for dealing with such events is a formula for future disasters.
In the United States, a substantial infrastructure has evolved in response to the numerous natural hazards, including 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 impacts on local communities that might otherwise have to prepare for severe storms and rebuild using only the limited local resources. For severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, many community governments have developed local emergency management systems that work in concert with state and Federal agencies to provide (a) pre-event preparations, (b) community-specific warnings as threatening storms approach, and (c) post-event relief. Of course, the National Weather Service has a substantial commitment of resources to forecasting and warning the general public of such weather events. Finally, a broad spectrum of agencies, both public and private, exist that offer such things as post-traumatic counseling, preparedness planning guides, damage mitigation programs, and so on.
Although this system is not perfect, and is not being proposed 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 event frequencies are generally lower in Europe, as well as the smaller areas of individual European countries, each nation has a correspondingly low annual event frequency, especially for the rare "high end" events that can create major disasters. I suggest that severe thunderstorms might best be dealt with as the Pan-European hazard they truly represent. Whereas it might be challenging to convince national governments to devote the resources to build their own infrastructure for dealing with natural hazards like severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, it might just be possible to create an international program (like the ECMWF) that would require a relatively small outlay of resources from any one nation.