predicted no intense hurricane impact on Berlin according to meteorological forecasts
A Surprise Tempest in Berlin
🌪️ By Peter Amenda
Just when the sunlight bathed Berlin in its golden glow, the tranquility was shattered. Branches twisted, leaves whirled. On a typical Monday afternoon, a storm battered through and around Germany's capital. A tragedy unfolded, with fatalities and injuries. For many, the storm caught them off guard, striking swift and fierce. Here's an interpretation of the events.
The German Weather Service (DWD) had issued a warning about severe thunderstorms and hurricane-force gusts, foreseeing wind speeds up to 100 kilometers per hour in the morning.
Fast forward to the Berlin twilight, the city was under the influence of storm Ziros, whose epicenter was over southern Scandinavia.
Weather Models Missed the Mark
Maximilian Bähr of WetterKontor, a meteorologist, claimed, "Yesterday's storm was substantially more extreme than the forecast models anticipated." Berlin, in contrast to northern Germany, seldom encounters such powerful storms, especially not at this time of year.
The ICON weather model of the DWD initially predicted wind gusts around 70 km/h, equivalent to wind strength 8 to 9.
However, the observed wind speeds surpassed these projections drastically: Between 5 and 6 pm, hurricane-force gusts of 107 km/h were recorded at the Berlin weather station in Dahlem, and 104 km/h in Tegel. These values far exceeded what the models had suggested, with the American weather model GFS barely predicting over 50 km/h.
Met Lab expert Bähr called out the discrepancy: "Those values were significantly higher than the models had signaled prior. The GFS model was even further off."
Was the German Weather Service Too Laid Back?
A DWD meteorologist defended their stance, stating, "No one snoozed through it. We alerted about robust storm gusts in the morning. We notified the fire department about the weather event in the evening via video conference. We fulfilled our informational obligations. That's all we could do."
Since there was no severe weather alert, few were attentive. The DWD meteorologist added, "Since the warning app usually only issues alerts for severe weather via push notifications, other updates are overlooked."
Urban storms, like the one that hit Berlin, can be tricky to forecast precisely due to their localized impacts and complex dynamics, which might not align with typical forecast parameters. Rapid intensification and sudden, severe gusts could escape the grasp of even the most advanced models. The ensuing chaos on transportation, including suspended S-Bahn rail traffic and emergency responses, underscores that the storm was more devastating than anticipated by the prognostic systems.
"Maximilian Bähr, a meteorologist at WetterKontor, commented on the storm, stating, 'Yesterday's weather was significantly more extreme than the forecast models anticipated, and Berlin, with its unusually low occurrence of powerful storms, was particularly affected.' Despite the German Weather Service (DWD) forecasting severe thunderstorms and hurricane-force gusts, the weather-forecasting models appeared to have underestimated the storm's intensity, as observed wind speeds in Berlin during the twilight hours exceeded the predicted values."
