Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017
Strong tornadoes are common for the European part of Russia but happen rather rare east of the Urals. June 2017 became an exceptional month when two tornado outbreaks occurred in the Ural region of Russia, yielded $3 million damage, and resulted in 1 fatality and 14 injuries. In this study, we perfo...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:099e21a52b2e4515879746d15c5a85cc 2023-05-15T18:41:28+02:00 Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 Alexander Chernokulsky Andrey Shikhov Alexey Bykov Igor Azhigov 2020-10-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111146 https://doaj.org/article/099e21a52b2e4515879746d15c5a85cc EN eng MDPI AG https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/11/1146 https://doaj.org/toc/2073-4433 doi:10.3390/atmos11111146 2073-4433 https://doaj.org/article/099e21a52b2e4515879746d15c5a85cc Atmosphere, Vol 11, Iss 1146, p 1146 (2020) tornado WRF model short-term forecast convective storm satellite data Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 article 2020 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111146 2022-12-31T04:17:16Z Strong tornadoes are common for the European part of Russia but happen rather rare east of the Urals. June 2017 became an exceptional month when two tornado outbreaks occurred in the Ural region of Russia, yielded $3 million damage, and resulted in 1 fatality and 14 injuries. In this study, we performed detailed analysis of these outbreaks with different data. Tornadoes and tornado-related environments were diagnosed with news and eyewitness reports, ground-based meteorological observations, sounding data, global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models data, synoptic charts, satellite images, and data of specially conducted aerial imaging. We also estimated the accuracy of short-term forecasting of outbreaks with the WRF-ARW mesoscale atmospheric model, which was run in convection-permitting mode. We determined the formation of 28 tornadoes during the first outbreak (3 June 2017) and 9 tornadoes during the second outbreak (18 June 2017). We estimated their intensity using three different approaches and confirmed that, based on the International Fujita scale (IF), one of the tornadoes had the IF4 intensity, being the first IF4 tornado in Russia in the 21st century and the first-ever IF4 tornado reported beyond the Ural Mountains. The synoptic-scale analysis revealed the similarity of two outbreaks, which both formed near the polar front in the warm part of deepening southern cyclones. Such synoptic conditions yield mostly weak tornadoes in European Russia; however, our analysis indicates that these conditions are likely favorable for strong tornadoes over the Ural region. Meso-scale analysis indicates that the environments were favorable for tornado formation in both cases, and most severe-weather indicators exceeded their critical values. Our analysis demonstrates that for the Ural region, like for other regions of the world, combined use of the global NWP model outputs indicating high values of severe-weather indices and the WRF model forecast outputs explicitly simulating tornadic storm formation could be ... Article in Journal/Newspaper ural mountains Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Atmosphere 11 11 1146 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
tornado WRF model short-term forecast convective storm satellite data Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 |
spellingShingle |
tornado WRF model short-term forecast convective storm satellite data Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 Alexander Chernokulsky Andrey Shikhov Alexey Bykov Igor Azhigov Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 |
topic_facet |
tornado WRF model short-term forecast convective storm satellite data Meteorology. Climatology QC851-999 |
description |
Strong tornadoes are common for the European part of Russia but happen rather rare east of the Urals. June 2017 became an exceptional month when two tornado outbreaks occurred in the Ural region of Russia, yielded $3 million damage, and resulted in 1 fatality and 14 injuries. In this study, we performed detailed analysis of these outbreaks with different data. Tornadoes and tornado-related environments were diagnosed with news and eyewitness reports, ground-based meteorological observations, sounding data, global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models data, synoptic charts, satellite images, and data of specially conducted aerial imaging. We also estimated the accuracy of short-term forecasting of outbreaks with the WRF-ARW mesoscale atmospheric model, which was run in convection-permitting mode. We determined the formation of 28 tornadoes during the first outbreak (3 June 2017) and 9 tornadoes during the second outbreak (18 June 2017). We estimated their intensity using three different approaches and confirmed that, based on the International Fujita scale (IF), one of the tornadoes had the IF4 intensity, being the first IF4 tornado in Russia in the 21st century and the first-ever IF4 tornado reported beyond the Ural Mountains. The synoptic-scale analysis revealed the similarity of two outbreaks, which both formed near the polar front in the warm part of deepening southern cyclones. Such synoptic conditions yield mostly weak tornadoes in European Russia; however, our analysis indicates that these conditions are likely favorable for strong tornadoes over the Ural region. Meso-scale analysis indicates that the environments were favorable for tornado formation in both cases, and most severe-weather indicators exceeded their critical values. Our analysis demonstrates that for the Ural region, like for other regions of the world, combined use of the global NWP model outputs indicating high values of severe-weather indices and the WRF model forecast outputs explicitly simulating tornadic storm formation could be ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Alexander Chernokulsky Andrey Shikhov Alexey Bykov Igor Azhigov |
author_facet |
Alexander Chernokulsky Andrey Shikhov Alexey Bykov Igor Azhigov |
author_sort |
Alexander Chernokulsky |
title |
Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 |
title_short |
Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 |
title_full |
Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 |
title_fullStr |
Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 |
title_full_unstemmed |
Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 |
title_sort |
satellite-based study and numerical forecasting of two tornado outbreaks in the ural region in june 2017 |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111146 https://doaj.org/article/099e21a52b2e4515879746d15c5a85cc |
genre |
ural mountains |
genre_facet |
ural mountains |
op_source |
Atmosphere, Vol 11, Iss 1146, p 1146 (2020) |
op_relation |
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/11/1146 https://doaj.org/toc/2073-4433 doi:10.3390/atmos11111146 2073-4433 https://doaj.org/article/099e21a52b2e4515879746d15c5a85cc |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111146 |
container_title |
Atmosphere |
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11 |
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11 |
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1146 |
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1766230992575528960 |