Abstract
On October 22, 2015, a rare tornado outbreak occurred in Attica and southern parts of Euboea island, in central Greece. Seven tornado events were recorded by several storm-cells, accompanied with 3.5 cm hail and large amounts of precipitation up to 180 mm, resulting in flash flood causing severe structural damage and 3 human casualties. In this study we investigate the synoptic and mesoscale weather conditions triggering and sustaining ingredients for deep convection and physical mechanisms leading to this extreme tornadogenesis by using upper-air measurements, satellite and Doppler radar data. Furthermore, an interesting interaction between gravity waves and tornadogenesis is also studied through numerical simulations of the Weather Research Forecast model (WRF) in fine resolution. The model was able to fairly reproduce the mesoscale environment associated with the formation of these supercells, showing the presence of 1500 J/kg MLCAPE which overlapped with 20 m/s of 0–6 km Bulk Shear. Furthermore a southwesterly low level flow forced unstable air masses from Saronicos gulf.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the Hellenic National Weather Service for supplying the radar data. We would also like to thank Dr. Scott Scollis from the University of Argonne, Chicago for his help to read the radar data and Mrs. Fotini Baladima for her useful comments on the manuscript. Finally we thank EUMETSAT for the use of Rapid Scan Service images.
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Lampiris, A., Dafis, S., Papavasileiou, G. (2017). Observational and Numerical Study of a Tornado Outbreak in Attica and Euboea. In: Karacostas, T., Bais, A., Nastos, P. (eds) Perspectives on Atmospheric Sciences. Springer Atmospheric Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35095-0_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35095-0_15
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