Freak hailstorms hit Germany for second day

[Viva_La_Revolution]

June 30 2006 at 02:19AM

Berlin - A storm that drenched parts of south-western Germany and brought hailstones as big as tennis balls killed a man and injured more than 100 people, police said on Thursday.

Less than 24 hours later, a similar hailstorm hit the same area of the Black Forest, knocking a man off a roof as he was repairing damage from the Wednesday evening storm, police said. He was in critical condition. The downpour again flooded building basements.

But police said the hailstones had not been as big as those that injured people, hammered cars and smashed windows the previous day.

In the Black Forest town of Villingen-Schwenningen, population 82 000, a teacher, Rolf-Juergen Look, stared sadly at his car, which had dozens of dents from the first hailstorm.

more at - http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=qw1151616422717B265

[benburch]

1. Wow.

I wonder how long before Europe sees the sort of tornados we have here in the Midwest?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. The last paragraph is very scary

Spots baked by the sun had reached temperatures of 60 degrees in Bosnia this week, according to the Sarajevo weather office, which said the previous seven days had been the hottest for a century.

:(

[Mabus]

6. 60 celsius = 140 fahrenheit

according to this converter: http://www.albireo.ch/temperatureconverter/

[sofa king]

11. Isn't that forget-to-breathe territory?

I vaguely recall that when the temperature in the engine rooms of ships goes over 130 deg. F, the part of the brain that regulates breathing can begin to malfunction, but there is a window above that temperature in which people can survive if they consciously make themselves breathe. Crews were sometimes trained to breathe on command.

I don't mean to frighten anyone, though--I'm pretty sure those conditions also require prolonged exposure and 100% humidity. I don't think those conditions are met anywhere in nature except along the Potomac River this time of year.

Come to think of it, maybe that explains how Congress works.

[Mabus]

33. Wow

I had not heard about that but it doesn't surprise me. I'm sure the body would be shutting down if exposed for a prolonged period to the heat extreme.

[Mabus]

4. or microbursts

we had one here a few months ago and it was, for lack of a better word, incredible. It caused devastation all over town. When tornadoes hit they cause a lot of damage but it is usually around the track of the tornado. When the microburst hit the damage seemed to be everywhere.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

12. Never heard of a microburst

...just looked it up and it sounds horrendous. I read Lawrence, KS had a lot of damage from one back in March..."The high wind, up to 80 miles per hour, created positive wind pressure on one side of a building and negative pressure as it flowed over the opposite side"
http://www.news.ku.edu/2006/march/16/damage.shtml
Makes you wonder what other exciting new experiences are we in for...

[tblue37]

16. Yep. You should have seen the damage.

I went outside to see what was going on when the wind kicked up and the sky turned strange. I was listening for that "oncoming train" sound that a tornado is supposed to make. Then all of a sudden, boom, that puppy slammed into us. It threw most of my neighbor's tree at me. I was standing in the driveway between my duplex and her house, and that tree broke off and came right at me while I scrambled back as fast as I could.

That was when I decided I needed to get inside, but I couldn't resist stepping out on the porch again to watch it toss everyone's porch furniture into the street and tear off trees and throw them into the street.

I thought my street looked bad. But later, when I drove around town a bit and when I walked up the hill to campus, I could see that my area actually got off pretty easy. Elsewhere huge trees were ripped up, broken off, or snapped like matchsticks. Roofs were torn off houses or holes were punched in them by falling trees. A fence post has been driven through the wall of one house.

But even with all the damage, and even with the scare I got, it was cool. I find weird weather exciting. Nature's moods awe me.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

19. That is bizarre...

I find it hard to stay indoors when the weather is particularly dramatic, myself, but the situation you were in sounds as if it was particularly dangerous. Did it come slamming straight down or in what way did the attack seem different from a tornado?

very creepy... I am in Wisconsin and we had some violent weather awhile back--many tornadoes in a single day. We were in the basement and out of curiousity I ventured upstairs and heard what I thought was a low-flying plane, but later realized it had been a tornado that went directly over our neighborhood before coming down as an F-3 about 6 miles from here and destroying someone else's neighborhood...fickle finger of fate.

BTW--Lawrence rocks. :toast: (One is a Boulevard ale, and the other is a Freestate Belgian Wheat)

[tblue37]

22. The sky churned and made sounds,

but there was no funnel cloud or roaring train sound of the sort typical of tornadoes. The tree tops and branches whipped around, and the violent thrust of the winds seemed not to be "coordinated." In other words, it was as though winds threw things in different directions around town, not all in the same direction. In a given area, it did seem the winds went in one direction. But there was no swirling to them. It's hard to describe, though at the time the wind pressure to me felt sort of as though a cosmic giant had decided to slap his hand down at me and then give it a side twist, the way Magneto does in the new X-Men movie, when he tosses government vans off the road.

The sky was so weird (that's what drew me outside, actually) that it looked like the fake scary sky roiling effects in cheesy movies.

BTW, I am severely hearing impaired and don't wear my hearing aids around the house, but though I can’t quite describe it, the sound was loud enough for me to hear it anyway, and there seemed to be high-pitched keening to it as well, though I have tinnitus, and that could have just been my tinnitus reacting to the change in air pressure. I imagine Mabus could do a much better job of describing the sound than I can. It was loud, though.

I rather loved the whole experience--but it was dumb of me to go out into it like that.

Three years ago a tornado hit Lawrence and did a lot of damage on the west side of town. I was taking a nap, and deaf as I am, I never heard the sirens. When my daughter came home from work, she said, "Mom, you know you just slept through a tornado!"

On June 19, 1981, one week after the same daughter was born by C-section, a tornado hit Lawrence. It dropped the back wall of the K-Mart store onto a person and killed him. We in the maternity ward were evacuated into an inner hallway and stayed there for what seemed like forever. I leapt out of bed, grabbed my robe and my daughter, and went running down the hallway, followed by a frantic, wheelchair-pushing nurse yelling, "Mrs. B___, come back here! You're a C-section! You have to let me push you!"

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. All I could think about was getting my baby to someplace safe. I didn't even notice the pain.

Lawrence's geographical set-up is such that tornadoes tend to hit only on the west and southwest part of town. Until fairly recently, those sections of town were sparsely populated. But there has been so much development that now a lot of residences and apartment complexes and commercial developments are in areas that can get nailed when tornadoes happen.

But that microburst was such an anomaly. It slammed right at the center of town, an area that tornadoes just have never hit.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

31. Absolutely stunning

It is fascinating that you were able to hear, "feel" or otherwise sense the noise despite your hearing problem! Your description, "the wind pressure to me felt sort of as though a cosmic giant had decided to slap his hand down at me and then give it a side twist" follows right along with the diagrams I have been looking at that show how a microburst forms... Straight down, then out sideways...

Too many meteorological anomalies going on all over... Stay safe down there!!

[Mabus]

26. My favorite is Ad Astra

Call me old-timey.

I read blue's response, here's mine:

Our bedroom is on the first floor. I just remember suddenly being wide awake. The first thing I noticed was this sound. I didn't recognize it nor could I place it. I've been around tornadoes and it wasn't the same sound. It was like a high nasal hum or om sound that just kept increasing in intensity. My husband was already awake and when I sat up he told me my coffee was on the bedstand. I asked what was going on and said he didn't know. We looked out the window and the sky was just weird. Close to the metallic blue of a tornado but not quite. The greens almost had that funky tinge they get during tornadic weather but not quite. The sky was swirling like there were several funnel clouds next to each other. We figured it would start hailing based on the what the sky looked like so my husband ran out to roll up the car windows. As he was running out the bedroom door the dogs, all three of them, came running in. They jumped on the bed and ran up beside me. They were scared. They weren't shaking scared but they were quite concerned.

When the wind hit our house it literally rocked it. My brother was staying upstairs. He remembered being awakened suddenly for no apparent reason. He got up to look out the window and it was when he was walking towards the window when the wind hit. He said he felt like he was in a fun house because he could see the walls moving. He ran downstairs to see what was going on.


About that time my husband came running in the door, ran through the house (past my bewildered brother standing in the living room) and jumped on the bed with me and the dogs. He later said he felt like making that Three Stooges sound "woo-woo-woo" and heard the Saber Dance (listen here: http://www.musicabona.com/samples/su3107-2_1_01.mp3) in his head when he saw the wind coming down the block. The wind, from my husband's description, came whoosing down the street. He saw it coming. He described it as having a presence probably from lots of minute dust. From the way he talked, since he actually saw it, it was moving horizontally not vertically.

We were inside when the wind actually hit. Right afterwards we headed outside. Everyone did. The skies were still swirling overhead, like funnel clouds, and people were pointing them out. But on the ground it was very still. Then all of a sudden a gust of wind would come by and spin the tree tops around but it never really made it to ground level. It was surreal.


People were walking around very stunned, almost shocked. The damage was very hit and miss. There were several trees that were almost demolished a block south of us. Right now, a once mighty tree up the block is little more than a huge trunk with little springs of growth coming out of the top. The wind basically sliced the tree off at the top of its trunk. There were also more trees blown and broken branches south of us. There seems to have almost been a cut-off point up the block from me. The houses south of us (but in the same block) recieved more damage than the houses north of us. We found shingles up and down the alley behind our house. We've never figured out which house they belonged to because the color doesn't match any of the houses nearby. Meanwhile, the dogs were back to normal. We were stunned but the dogs came through it just fine.

It looked a lot like tornadic weather but was just a little different. The sky was similiar in color, a metallic blue and the greens - there's something about how green looks different right before a tornado - were very similar. It's hard to describe. There was not the signature chug-chugging sound associated with a tornado. Instead it was just that sound that just kept getting more intense. It was just like a prolonged note that kept increasing in intensity and then suddenly ended.

on edit: the weather sirens didn't go off until after we got hit. Then several of them went off line for most of the rest of the day. The emergency management people around here are usually pretty good about setting of the alarms but this one slipped right by them. It just came out of nowhere.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

28. What a read!

Surreal is right... That is so strange about the one-note type sound and the walls moving. very scary. Did they give an estimate of the peak velocity? My grandmothr was born and raised in KS and told us about some of her tornado experiences. This is different. I know that green color that comes with a tornado...sort of a dingy, pea soup tone. Your husband's Woo-woo and Sabre Dance association cracks me up:rofl: I was at the Replay...window must have been fixed by then or (?hmmm). Ad Astra is delicious too. Just couldn't think of the name! It was on special at the Freestate when we were there...happy hour outside--nothing quite like it.

Hope you don't get anymore of these freak storms. I don't think I ever want to experience that either.

[Mabus]

29. Here's how the Replay looked after the microburst

and a link to a contemporaneous article with pictures showing the damage around Lawrence. If you go through the photos you'll find a few more of the Replay and the damage it sustained.

on edit: here's a link to a story about earlier Lawrence tornadoes. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2003/may/08/tornado_touches_down/

As far as your question about the difference between the microburst and past tornadoes, I think the biggest difference was the "path". With tornadoes the path is more defined. A tornado may go back up and then come back down but it is following a more distinct pathway. With the microburst, the damage seemed more far flung and the path wasn't as distinct.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

30. Thanks for the pics and info

My husband reminded me that when we were at the Replay in April, the window had been replaced by plywood. We wondered what had happened... I know Kansas gets more and worse tornadoes than the northern midwest. I am a NOAA weather website fiend, and Larry-phile(partly due to ancestral connections dating back to 1850s) , and always worry about you all when I see severe weather warnings in your area. Now it looks as if there is even more to worry about!

[Mabus]

32. LOL

My family came to Lawrence early on too. They were part of the Massachusetts emigration group (and people wonder why Mass is the main street sowntown :eyes: ).

I am a NOAA fiend too. My favorite site: http://aviationweather.gov/obs/sat/intl/ I was watching it last year and I believe I was the first DU'er to identify Tropical Storm Alpha before it was officially a TS.

Don't worry too much. You know us. We're a hearty breed. Despite what the Kansas Board of Ed says we evolve and adapt. Besides, there's nothing like a bad storm that brings neighborhoods together. I know more of my neighbors since the storm. And we're way past the nod and wave stage. We now stop and have actual conversations.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

35. Sabre Dance

I wanted to tell you, whenever I get WAY TOO busy (or have to pee REALLy bad) that damn song comes into my head. On the old Ed Sullivan show there used to be these Russian plate spinners that had a string of tall poles set up and they would put a china plate on the top of each and set the poles in motion so that the plates would spin on the tops of the poles....the guys would run frantically back and forth to try to keep the plates spinning so none of them would fall off and crash. The song that was played while they did this was Sabre Dance. TV entertanment sure ain't what it used to be. ;)

[Mabus]

36. Don't forget to make "woo-woo" sounds

:rofl:

[eowyn_of_rohan]

37. Yeah

that would add a new dimension to it:bounce:

[Mabus]

18. I live in Lawrence. It woke me up

Actually the drop in barometric pressure woke me up. The sound of the wind was incredible. It was like a humming sound that just kept building in intensity. My husband went outside to roll up the car windows and a few seconds later he came running back in and said "the wind is coming". He saw the wind coming down the street. And just like a tornado it suddenly stopped. We saw several funnel cloud formations overhead during and afterwards. We spent part of the day helping clear debris. Power was out, there were small fires from downed lines and people were just stunned at the damage.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

20. How weird that pressure woke you up

Look at these diagrams of how a microburst works
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/svr/comp/out/micro/home.rxml

Do you think it could have been actual pressure of the wind itself that woke you up? (That may be a dumb question)...I just went through Larry in April but hadnt known of this microburst, and didnt look for signs of damage...I was only downtown though.

(trying to fix this link...)
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:
7oL2gtGbvGcJ:ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/svr/comp/out/micro/home.rxml+microburst&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Maybe this cached link will work

[Mabus]

21. Not really

I found this

Sleep surroundings: The sleeping environment can have an important bearing on both types of insomniacs. Noise, an uncomfortable bed, a noisy partner, and light are obvious distractions, but there are others. One often overlooked factor is temperature. Most people sleep more soundly in a cool room. However, wind, changes in barometric pressure, and sudden weather shifts can wake a person up even if the room temperature is ideal. http://www.healthy.net/scr/Article.asp?Id=439

After the microburst I did a lot of reading. I've had an interest in weather since I was a kid and ran across a book called "Unusual Weather" by Frank Lane. I got hooked. I'm no weather expert, having gone for other degrees in college, but I've definitely have got an interest. I had heard about microbursts before but had never experienced one. Now that I have I don't think I want them to become regular events.

I did a search and found a link that worked to the site you mentioned. A better look at how it works is at http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/mab/microburst/vu_micro.html you have to click on the picture to see the next one in the sequence.

Downtown actually got quite a bit of damage. Car windows were blown out and the huge glass pane on the south side of the Replay Lounge was just gone. A friend of mine has a store downtown and he had to replace his storefront window because it looked like it had been sandblasted. Tellers had to replace some windows and there were a lot of torn awnings up and down Massachusetts. It was a mess.

[tblue37]

23. My power was out for 6 hours. How long for you? (eom)

[Mabus]

24. About two hours

My husband and I went to the 6th St. HyVee for their breakfast buffet since we couldn't cook. We weren't alone. HyVee has some gas stoves so they were still able to put out hot food. We got back around 10:30 a.m. and the electricity had just come back on. I'm a basketball fan and the Jayhawks were playing so I became somewhat oblivious to my surroundings once the games started.

I do know that houses across the street and for several blocks over went without power for a lot longer than we did. I didn't realize this until we took the dogs for their evening walk. About half way up the block we noticed that the houses across the street were still dark. When we got to the corner we saw that the houses east of us were all dark but the houses to the west all had at least one light on.

[tblue37]

15. Are you in Lawrence, Kansas?

We had a microburst here in Lawrence, and I haven't read of one anywhere else recently.

[Mabus]

17. Yep

An east-sider. You can see some photos around my neighborhood in my journal: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Mabus/2

[reprobate]

25. Here's a pretty good explanation of microbursts and wind shear.

Microbusts

They have been responsible for several fatal airline accidents

[Mabus]

27. Cool

:hi: I have no doubt about that. Especially now.

[Chipper Chat]

3. Anxious to hear where Pat Robertson lays the blame.

Erotic sausages maybe?

[truthisfreedom]

5. "there's no evidence of global warming" is being quietly modified by pukes

to "there's no evidence that humans have caused global warming."

after the glaciers are gone and the icebergs disappear, remind a head-in-the-sand republican about the unscientific, wishful-thinking idiocy of their party for so many years.

[Strelnikov_]

7. ..

[KittyWampus]

8. You've just pointed out something very important- PLEASE start a thread

discussing this point- GOP now have inserted the words 'human caused'.

Excellent point, very well taken. Hadn't thought of it yet but you are absolutely correct.

[Tace]

10. Rest Assured -- The GOP Will Figure Out A Way To Shift Blame To Dems

I've been hearing GOP talking points from my dad all my 50 years. They'll figure something out. It will be total bullshit, but the "dumbfuck" part of the GOP base will swallow it hook, line and sinker.

[orwell]

9. Nuthing to see here citizen...

...homeland security is taking care of you.

Just move along...

[IndianaGreen]

13. Sounds like they are having Midwestern weather in Germany

Any tornadoes lately?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

14. nothing on the radar so far

they are unusual there, but not unheard of.

There are a total of 863 recorded tornado observations in Germany since the year 855. The leftmost graph gives each report separately (798 cases with accurate location).
http://www.tordach.org/de/tornado.htm

[zann725]

34. Next comes the plague of locusts, right?

Seriously, I heard that highly "unusual" hail storms recently hit Bend, Oregon as well.

Something is quite serious going on. If it IS global warming, things are FAR MORE ADVANCED than we're being told.