5/26/09 DISC: Supercells France and Belgium

[Lars Lowinski]

Hi all,

a new severe weather episode is ongoing during this rather active month of May in parts of wrn and ctrl EUR. Several supercells occured during the evening and overnight hours in ctrl and nrn France as well as in Belgium and portions of the Netherlands.

There are many reports of golfball to baseball-sized hail from a significant supercell along a long swath from the french border through some areas of wrn Belgium to the dutch border. Damaging winds occured as well in some spots, damage reports and eyewitness/stormchaser accounts are starting to come in right now. Here´s an article from a flemish news website:

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/binnenland/090526_Storm

Check out the hail picture at the bottom of the page...

Amsterdam Schiphol airport, one of the biggest hubs in Europe, got hit by a fierce storm with gusts up to 57 kts and about 66 mm of rain. The severe threat will be shifting more towards Germany today, an early morning MCS near the North sea already produced flash flooding and hail up to 3 cm in diameter. Olivier or others, how about reports from yesterday´s activity in France? More to come...

 

[Lars Lowinski]

As expected, severe storms moved across parts of Germany today. The hardest hit areas are the south and parts of the east. A bow echo moved from nern Switzerland across Lake Constance towards Munich. There are several reports of gusts over 100 km/h and damage. I just got a call from a friend of mine who was chasing this bow near Augsburg in Bavaria. He told me that there is a lot of damage to vegetation and homes probably caused by intense downbursts in the area. More information to come...

This 2nd round of severe after a night of intense storms in parts of Belgium and the Netherlands. Here are some more links to images from last night´s storms (source: weerwoord.be):

http://www.weerwoord.be/includes/forum_read.php?id=987951&tid=987951

http://www.weerwoord.be/includes/forum_read.php?id=987928&tid=987928

IR-satellite loop of yesterday´s and last night´s supercells and MCS´s:

http://users.fulladsl.be/spb4195/video.swf (this may take a while to download for non-DSL-users)

 

[Lars Lowinski]

More pics from the "gorilla-sized"-hail in Belgium with last night´s supercell:

http://www.weerwoord.be/includes/forum_read.php?id=988238&tid=988238

This happened between 2 and 4 a.m. The man who collected these hailstones said that they were already melting for about 30 minutes until he finally put them in the freezer!

 

[Lars Lowinski]

More news:
apparently, the supercell was followed by a line of storms with damaging winds, there is some talk that this might have been a derecho, however I don´t know about damage or wind reports from nrn France to confirm that this line actually met the definition (scale and number of reports) of a derecho.

In southern Germany, a wind gust of 140 km/h has been measured with the bow echo there in the early evening.