Tornado warning in UK!

[Paul Knightley]

Just a point of interest really - severe thunderstorms are not 'officially' predicted/warned for in the UK - they are fairly rare.

However, we at TORRO, and others, including Estofex, attempt to forecast such storms, although tornado warnings are not issued.

On Monday, a strong storm passed over a USAF/RAF base in the east of England (Mildenhall). It seems that the base issued an internal tornado warning, and perhaps sounded the sirens (maybe a UK first!), as the storm approached.

See http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=63339

 

[D. Hayes]

Wow my 4 years station at RAF Mildenhall and all it did was rain rain rain and on a very rare occasion lightening. The only lightening photo I've got from there is the one under my name and that was shear luck being a daytime photo. I'll have to email my buddies still stationed there when i get back to work Monday.

 

[Keith Mullen]

RAF Mildenhall / Lakenheath

When I lived in Suffolk, we heard the sirens and warnings go off all the time in the 90's.

"This is the Wing Command Post. Severe Thunderstorms have been sighted within 25 miles of the base... This is an emergency situation. All personell are required to take immediate action..."

My first tornado was one that touched down in Mildenhall and tracked all the way past Lakenheath. That was pretty cool. I have a photo of it somewhere.

We had unbelievable storms all the time. I miss that badly.

Anyone who tries to argue about a lack of supercells in the UK never lived in East Anglia just to the NE of the Cambridge Ridge.

...that and I miss REAL fish and chips.

 

[D. Hayes]

I lived up towards Norwich in Attleborough just off A11. I was there from 02-06 and I just recall a small short lived tornado up towards Thetford that made the local paper. I thought it was sorta funny all the hype for such a tiny thing. Now they did have some good high wind storms from time to time but I never heard the base alert system get used and I worked the flight line with a radio by my side.

And far as their fish and chips, well the fish sucked, always fatty and bland so I had to put a cup of salt on them and pick through the goo. It was the East Indian food that I loved there.

 

[Keith Mullen]

man...

91, 92, and 93 were good years for storms! Saw a lot of good rotating bases, amazing lightning and hail, and aside from the one good twister - a few funnels, all from my front door.

There was a chippies in Norwich and Cambridge that was unbelievable. A few weren't impressive, but most I went to still have me drooling when I think about it to this day.

MMMmmmm

There were actually a few times when Mildenhall got hit by decent sized tornadoes while I was there. They crossed right over the flightline right out in the open.

I think a lot of the reason why they went relatively unnoticed is the same reason as here - when you have tall trees lining most of the roads & everyone is used to gray gloom and rain most of the time... you just don't bother looking up.



That and it's pretty hard to damage a house with wind - when it's constructed of a gagillion pounds of raw mortared flint... 800 years ago

 

[Tim Lumb]

Me and living in crappy Yorkshire, worst we have gotten (or I have gotten) is a thunderstorm which flash flooded Helmslrey back in 2005 xD, and the 2007 floods in Hull.

 

[Keith Mullen]

Not that bad

Tim, it's not that bad. You are within a very reasonable drive of far better country than most in the world are privvy to.

I'm unfamiliar with what radar and other weathersoft you have these days, but you're not in bad shape.

Paul, there were a lot of warnings and emergency sirens in the early-mid 90's regarding Tstorms & Torn for Lakenheath/Mildenhall. Perhaps that was more popular 15-20 years ago and its just fizzled out a bit?

 

[Tim Vasquez]

You guys need to elect some MPs who will reform the Met Office and share that Doppler radar data you all have. They've got 19 weather radar sites fielded and all I've ever seen are those crutty old BBC type composites. I bet it would do wonders for forecasting and public safety (and climatology!) in Great Britain if more of that data was pushed out for public consumption.

Tim

 

[Keith Mullen]

That's the truth

That's not a joke by any means Tim V.

Back in the early 90's I used to marvel at the size and number of Doppler Radar Globes in East Anglia.

Feltwell had 4 of them in addition to Mildenhall and Lakenheath - all 3 sites less than 20 miles apart.

...and all the globes were property of the USAF/RAF...

Guess noone taught them how to share.

 

[Nathan Edwards]

That's not a joke by any means Tim V.

Back in the early 90's I used to marvel at the size and number of Doppler Radar Globes in East Anglia.

Feltwell had 4 of them in addition to Mildenhall and Lakenheath - all 3 sites less than 20 miles apart.

...and all the globes were property of the USAF/RAF...

Guess noone taught them how to share.

I have this a few miles up the road from where I live:

I wonder what the resolution on this might be if it were put to weather purposes (rather than spotting all the intercontinental missiles which are getting launched these days ) As it is, I'll make do with the met offices weather radar data which seems to consist entirely of tiny low res maps covered by county sized pixels to indicate rain

 

[Tim Vasquez]

I should also add that I forecasted for a month at RAF Fairford back in 1994, and as some of you may know, that's a really big base for transient operations and of course the annual airshow. We had access to absolutely nothing in terms of weather radar there, not even any type of dialup radar, nor did the Met Office send any radar products in their fax feed. I never worked at a DoD weather facility that did not have some kind of radar access, not even at Tonopah Test Range, until that month at RAF Fairford. We would have been out of our league if it was November and systems were coming in from the Atlantic.

Tim

 

[Paul Knightley]

Tim - yes, I would dearly love to get my hands on the Doppler output! I have seen some of it from a couple of recent tornado events over here, and it's pretty good.

Meanwhile, we do have 1km composite imagery now at 5 min intervals, which is much better than a few years ago.

Online, our company makes the 1km stuff freely available, but at 15 min resolution, overlayed on Google maps at http://www.raintoday.co.uk/

 

[Lars Lowinski]

Hi Tim,

The situation here in Germany is not very different from the UK. Even though the German weather service DWD has one of the best doppler radar networks (16 sites in total) in the EU, most of the high-resolution imagery is only for internal use at their wx offices.

Radar images that are freely available still won´t be much better than a 2 km composite with a color grading that does not make much sense. These are some high-res base ref images that may be used for non-commercial purposes only by members of the the German Skywarn network (we do not get any velocity data even though it is there):

Here, a low-topped supercell can be seen north of Hamburg which went on to produce an F2 tornado near Neumünster and, further southeast, some more mainly non-severe storms. We even have a cell-tracking tool at our disposal but none of this data is available for free...This makes it also difficult for private companies to develop software for private use (like SwiftWX or GR, for instance) or commercial/media-related purposes (like products from Baronservices, etc.). And the media weather coverage and awareness over here in general is yet another story ;-).

 

[Martin North]

You guys need to elect some MPs who will reform the Met Office and share that Doppler radar data you all have. They've got 19 weather radar sites fielded and all I've ever seen are those crutty old BBC type composites. I bet it would do wonders for forecasting and public safety (and climatology!) in Great Britain if more of that data was pushed out for public consumption.

Tim

Sadly that'll not happen. The Meto (Met Office) is part of the Ministry of Defense over here.

If you want good met information....you have to go out to a variety of European sources. Some are free and some are not.

Personally (on top of the externally sourced info) I pay $100 plus for the Met Office aviation (pilots) package which gives me a lot more info.

As for the Meto radar sites....they keep the capabilities of them very guarded. I am reliably informed by some Mets that they all are capable of producing doppler imagery. Then you'll speak to others who deny knowing or say they aren't.

I know one of them (near Reading) is doppler enabled. I have seen images from it. The story we get for that one is that it is only 'experimental'.

Flim-flam.