The official ECSS 2015 photo is now available here:

Photo (c) Thomas Schreiner, ESSL

At the ECSS in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, the Heino Tooming Award 2015 was presented to 

Alexander Keul, Bernhard Brunner, Melanie Korff, Sanjay Sharma, Partha Roy, John Allen, Katie A. Bowden, Mat Said Aini, Abu Bakar Elistina, Mohd Zainal Abidin Ab Kadir, Chandima Gomes and Mateusz Taszarek

for their work entitled

“Severe weather and psychology – Analysis of international survey data”, presented by Dr. Alexander Keul. 

Photo: Thomas Schreiner, ESSL

The full list of Heino Tooming Awardees is available here.

The ECSS in Wiener Neustadt by its participants offered an outstanding scientific programme. Scientists from all over the world, as far as from New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Argentina, Brazil and the USA exchanged knowledge with their European colleagues.

The next European Conference on Severe Storms will be held from 18 to 22 September 2017 in Pula, Croatia, in cooperation with the local organizing partner DHMZ.

The corporate report by ESSL, ARPA Veneto, ZAMG and MeteoNetwork on the 8 July 2015 Mira tornado is ready and available for download (PDF files):

Report including Attachment 1 (Tornado Intensity Map)

Attachment 2: List of damage ratings

Attachment 3: ESSL working paper for damage ratings

The Scientific Programme Committee sends a message to all ECSS participants (PDF files):

Message Text and Attachment

SHUTTLE BUS

Minor changes were made to the shuttle bus schedule, and a bus stop location map was added. Please check on the ECSS webpage!

VIDEO SESSION

We are preparing an exciting video session. Our ESSL employee Thilo Kühne has to deal nearly on a daily basis with tornado reports and therefore probably has the best overview of tornado video footage from Europe. At this conference he will present a unique collection of video sequences of tornadoes in Europe of the past years. In addition: If you have photos or videos of severe weather worth seeing, please approach us already before the conference. We are pleased to include such material into a diverting participants-collage.

PROGRAMME

A programme overview was added to the ECSS webpage. There will be printouts of the programme in your conference bag, which you will receive on site, so you do not need to print it out by yourself. The full programme book was also updated on the webpage.

LATE REGISTRATION

If you did not register for the conference so far (or for social events), please do so! Please remember, that registration is a separate process to – and not done with – the abstract submission! Having your registration data already in the conference system will heavily speed up the on-site registration! We also want to inform you, that there will be an option for calm on-site registration already on Sunday afternoon and evening, from 15:00 to 20:00 local time.

We are very looking forward to meeting you in person in Wiener Neustadt!

A map of the tornado path is now available (click for enlarged view):

Some of the photos show interesting details. Tornado winds blew (towards the viewer) through the gates of this hall or work shop, causing a Bernoulli effect to an internal wall of this building (bent wall on the left side of the image with broken windows). So, even though the roof remained in place in this case, the internal structural damage was significant:

Photo (c) Alois M. Holzer

On Wednesday 8 July 2015 late afternoon a violent tornado struck the Veneto region of northern Italy. One large villa (built in the 18th century) was completely destroyed, several houses suffered severe damage with a few walls collapsed, even more houses lost their complete roof, while many houses suffered significant or at least minor roof damage.

On 11, 12 and 13 July Alois M. Holzer from ESSL investigated this case together with Massimo Enrico Ferrario from the Meteorological Service of ARPA Veneto (preliminary report after the event), Rainer Kaltenberger from ZAMG and Alberto Gobbi from the association Meteonetwork.

The final report needs to be compiled, but a few key figures can already be given (updated on 14 July 2015 :

11.5 km – length of the tornado damage track
700 m – typical width
1000 m – maximum width of tornado damage track
F4 – maximum intensity on the Fujita Scale

A link to the ESWD database with an entry of this event can be found here.

F4 damage to large villa in Mira (VE): brick structure with walls largely blown down. Damage assessment showed aged (and therefore considerably weakened) mortar between the bricks, leading to F4 (instead of F5) rating for this data point. Photo (c) ESSL, Alois M. Holzer

15 August 2015 is the last day with standard registration rates for the ECSS. After this deadline prices will increase by EUR 40.- to EUR 50.-, depending on the category.

Please also note that since 15 June 2015 wired payments cannot be accepted, but only credit card payments.

The Local Organizing Committee asks ECSS participants to book their hotel accommodation as early as possible. This will enhance the chance to get a room in a preferred hotel.

Although weather wasn’t very cooperative during some days, participants of the ESSL Testbed 2015 were able to test new or even experimental forecasting and warning tools. You can look back to the activities in our Testbed Blog.

General information about this unique facility in Europe can be found here.

To cope with the increasing interest in our ESWD related activities, ESSL issues a job offer for a minijob: “ESWD Key Account Manager”

For details, please refer to this PDF docoment.

Application deadline: 30 April 2015