Tornado hits France; unprecedented April heat in Europe
A rare EF-1 tornado with 73 - 112 mph winds (117 - 180 kph) hit Toulouse, France on Sunday, causing minor damage that included collapsed walls, uprooted trees, and cars moved out of place. The tornado touched down 15 - 20 km south of Toulouse in Southwest France at 7:10 pm local time, and baseball-sized hail (4 cm) also hit the region. According to the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD), this was the first tornado in France in 2012. French tornadoes are rare; there were just three tornadoes in the country in 2011. The European Severe Weather Database (ESWD) (as summarized by Wikipedia) lists 15 tornadoes for all of Europe so far in 2012. Most of the twisters (nine) were in Turkey. For comparison, an average of 495 tornadoes touched down in the U.S. during the period January - April over the years 2009 - 2011. A key reason for the lack of tornadoes in Europe is that the atmosphere is usually not unstable enough. Tornadoes require warm, moist, low-density air near the surface, and cold, dry, high-density air aloft to provide a lot of instability. The Baltic Sea and North Sea to the north of Europe moderate cold air flowing south from the pole, reducing the amount of instability over Europe.
Video 1. A rare French tornado kicks up dust near Toulouse, France on April 29, 2012.
Unprecedented April heat hits Central and Eastern Europe
A European heat wave of unparalleled intensity for so early in the year smashed all-time April heat records over much of Central and Eastern Europe on Saturday and Sunday. According to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt, and weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera, new national April heat records were set in Belarus, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Moldova, and Poland, and hundreds of stations in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Russia recorded their hottest April temperatures on record. Moscow hit 28.6°C (84°F) on Sunday, the hottest April reading in the city since record keeping began 130 years ago. The culprit for the heat wave and French tornado is a large low pressure system off the coast of France whose counter-clockwise flow has been pumping hot air from the Sahara Desert northwards into Europe. The low is expected to continue to bring unusually hot weather to most of Central and Eastern Europe for the remainder of the week.
New all-time April national heat records set over the past few days:
Poland: 31.7°C (89.18°F) at Tomaszow on 4/29
Germany: 32.2°C (90.0°F) at Munich on 4/28
Austria: 31.8°C (89.2°F) at Ranshoten on 4/28
Belarus: 30.4°C ( 86.7°F) at Zitovici on 4/29
Moldova 32.5°C
Lithuania
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Where ya live?
Anyways hope the thick of the storms (round 3) aren't at least tornadic when they come by your area.
Took in Bartlesville, OK
Credit to Mbryan777 for the photo but just WOW.
Here's a map I made with my location. A few miles NE of Cincinnati.
Thanks. =)
Wow, that's beautiful
Mcv?
Mesoscale Convective Vortex: A low pressure area within a MCS (Mesoscale Convective System). Usually associated with damaging wind/hail outbreaks. Additionally, if these systems move over tropical waters, they can sometimes form into a tropical cyclone.
Not sure if this could be considered one or not..
Oh Definitely, good call.
Thanks
Doug Hill was way better...sad to see he's being phased out over at ABC7...
Did you mean MCV?
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN JUAN PR
1016 PM AST TUE MAY 1 2012
.UPDATE...SHOWERS AND A FEW THUNDERSTORMS ARE MOVING IN FROM THE
SOUTHEAST INTO THE LOCAL CARIBBEAN WATERS. THERE IS ABUNDANT
MOISTURE TO THE SOUTHEAST OF THE LOCAL AREA AND IT IS APPROACHING
THE AREA. THESE SCATTERED SHOWERS ARE EXPECTED TO CONTINUE TO MOVE
CLOSER TO OUR LOCAL AREA OVERNIGHT...INCREASING CLOUDINESS AND
SHOWER ACTIVITY OVER THE USVI AND EASTERN PUERTO RICO. COMPUTER
MODELS INSIST IN DEEP MOISTURE MOVING IN FROM WEDNESDAY UNTIL AT
LEAST FRIDAY...THURSDAY BEING THE DAY WITH THE MORE WIDESPREAD
SHOWERS. THE 02/00Z SOUNDING INDICATED A CONSIDERABLE INCREASE IN
MOISTURE AND INSTABILITY AT THE LOCAL AREA. IN ADDITION...FORECAST
SOUNDINGS CONTINUE TO INDICATE AN INCREASE IN MOISTURE AND INSTABILITY
OVER THE AREA WITH PRECIPITABLE WATER VALUES REACHING OVER 2.2
INCHES ON THURSDAY...CURRENTLY HOWEVER...BLENDED SATELLITE TPW
IMAGERY IS SHOWING PRECIPITABLE WATER VALUES OF OVER 2.4 INCHES TO
THE SOUTHEAST OF THE LOCAL AREA. AT THIS TIME WE EXPECT NUMEROUS
SHOWERS ON WEDNESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY WITH MOST OF THE ACTIVITY OVER
THE USVI AND THE INTERIOR AND NORTHERN PORTIONS OF PUERTO RICO.
I did.. lol, & just after the excellent definition & all posted there.
Our you can refer to Nowcoast. Turn on the wind feature & zoom on in..just missing the west wind.
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Urgent Request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
Source: Green Action Japan
Date: May 1, 2012
To: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
An Urgent Request on UN Intervention to Stabilize the Fukushima Unit 4 Spent Nuclear Fuel
Recently, former diplomats and experts both in Japan and abroad stressed the extremely risky condition of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool and this is being widely reported by world media. Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), who is one of the best-known experts on spent nuclear fuel, stated that in Unit 4 there is spent nuclear fuel which contains Cesium-137 (Cs-137) that is equivalent to 10 times the amount that was released at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Thus, if an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.
Nearly all of the 10,893 spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima Daiichi plant sit in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes, with roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl.
Nuclear experts from the US and Japan such as Arnie Gundersen, Robert Alvarez, Hiroaki Koide, Masashi Goto, and Mitsuhei Murata, a former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland, and, Akio Matsumura, a former UN diplomat, have continually warned against the high risk of the Fukushima Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool.
US Senator Roy Wyden, after his visit to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 6 April, 2012, issued a press release on 16 April, pointing out the catastrophic risk of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, calling for urgent US government intervention. Senator Wyden also sent a letter to Ichiro Fujisaki, Japan’s Ambassador to the United States, requesting Japan to accept international assistance to tackle the crisis.
We Japanese civil organizations express our deepest concern that our government does not inform its citizens about the extent of risk of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool. Given the fact that collapse of this pool could potentially lead to catastrophic consequences with worldwide implications, what the Japanese government should be doing as a responsible member of the international community is to avoid any further disaster by mobilizing all the wisdom and the means available in order to stabilize this spent nuclear fuel. It is clearly evident that Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool is no longer a Japanese issue but an international issue with potentially serious consequences. Therefore, it is imperative for the Japanese government and the international community to work together on this crisis before it becomes too late. We are appealing to the United Nations to help Japan and the planet in order to prevent the irreversible consequences of a catastrophe that could affect generations to come. We herewith make our urgent request to you as follows:
1. The United Nations should organize a Nuclear Security Summit to take up the crucial problem of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool.
2. The United Nations should establish an independent assessment team on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 and coordinate international assistance in order to stabilize the unit’s spent nuclear fuel and prevent radiological consequences with potentially catastrophic consequences.
I don't even want to contemplate the human consequences of what happens if that pool actually goes.
The entire nation of Japan will have to be evacuated and abandoned, if that's even physically possible.
And that's just for starters.
No telling what happens for the east coast of China, or Alaska and western U.S. and Canada.
Because it is so far south, Guyana is well outside the hurricane belt and very much in the ITCZ. I'd suppose a TC landfall there would be on the order of a 1 in 500 year event. But when T-waves "run into South America", it's typically Surinam, Guyana and later Venezuela that they hit - and, I suppose, drench.
ScienceDaily (May 1, 2012) — On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun's surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.....
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West of Lincoln, NE
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There's a big dust storm that will probably suppress buildup of this activity, in case you are expecting a hurricane.
really ????
oooooo....!
I doubt that's our first tropical wave. But if it is, it might become Aletta later on in the Pacific. Just maybe.
/end offseason boredom rant
That looks like it is headed to Freemont.
bright pink regions is dust
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