The severe convective weather season of 2018 has started

During recent days, pronounced severe convective storm activity has occurred across Europe, reports of which have been collected into the ESWD with help of ESSL’s partners. In total, we have received over 360 reports in the past 7 days. A majority of them were of large hail (184 reports), followed by severe wind gusts (79 reports) and heavy rainfall (66 reports). The first notable event was 29th April, where a tornadic supercell tracked more than 500 km from central France to Belgium. Wind damage caused by this supercell is still being investigated to confirm possible occurrence of several tornadoes along its path. On 1 May, a long-lived supercell over eastern Poland produced a hail swath 300 km long with hail up to 5 cm in diameter. And one day later, series of severe storms struck Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Austria. Hail up to 6 cm in diameter was observed over northeastern Slovenia, damaging houses and numerous flash floods were reported from Vienna, where storms persisted for several hours.