An EF3 Multivortex Tornado over the Ionian Region: Is It Time for a Dedicated Warning System over Italy?
- 1 March 2016
- journal article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Vol. 97 (3), 337-344
- https://doi.org/10.1175/bams-d-14-00227.1
Abstract
The possibility offered by the Internet to share pictures of tornadoes, and the storm-report archiving in the European Storm Weather Database, have made it apparent that the occurrence of tornadoes over Europe has been underestimated. Together with weak waterspouts and tornadoes, large and intense vortices are occasionally observed. Among these, an EF3 multivortex tornado with a path width of some hundreds of meters affected southeastern Italy on 28 November 2012, causing one casualty and estimated damage of €60M to the largest steel plant in Europe. A tide gauge positioned near the location of tornado landfall and a vertical atmospheric profile available a few hours later near the affected region represent unique sources of information for these events in the Mediterranean. During its transit across the port of Taranto, a waterspout, which was to become the tornado, was observed to have induced a sea level rise of about 30 cm. The supercell responsible for the tornado developed from convective cells triggered by orographic uplift over the Apennines. The 0–1-km wind shear was exceptional in comparison with other Italian tornadoes, and was remarkable in comparison with U.S. events as well. Other indices for severe convection diagnosis also showed extremely high values. The occasional occurrence of events with similar or stronger intensities over Italy emphasizes the need for the Distributed National Weather Service—which will integrate Italian meteorological institutions under one agency and is currently under development—to devise a warning system dedicated to the monitoring and prediction of severe convective events.Keywords
This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- The tornadoes of spring 2011 in the USA: an historical perspectiveWeather, 2012
- Evaluation of European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX) forecastsAtmospheric Research, 2011
- Mechanisms for convection development in a long-lasting heavy precipitation event over southeastern ItalyAtmospheric Research, 2011
- Severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings in EuropeAtmospheric Research, 2009
- Overview of ESSL's severe convective storms research using the European Severe Weather Database ESWDAtmospheric Research, 2008
- An Independent Overview of the National Weather Service in ItalyBulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2008
- The climatology of tornadoes and waterspouts in ItalyAtmospheric Research, 2007
- A Sensitivity Study of Hodograph-Based Methods for Estimating Supercell MotionWeather and Forecasting, 2005
- The June 4th 1999 severe weather episode in San Quirino, Italy: a tornado event?Atmospheric Research, 2001
- The 18 June 1997 Companion supercells: Multiparametric Doppler radar analysisArchiv für Meteorologie, Geophysik und Bioklimatologie Serie A, 2000