Tornadoes are rapidly rotating narrow regions of low pressure, and they form in a process which takes several steps. First, a rotating body of air forms at the ground because of vertical wind sheer, then horizontal rotating air is lifted into the air by thunderstorm updrafts, and a Mesocyclone is fully developed in this updraft. In the United States, an overwhelming majority of tornadoes travel in a northeastern direction, Which is the same direction that the prevailing winds flow.
Tornadoes do occur in Germany regularly, as indicated on the map below of tornado occurrences. Although, they only experience an average of 10 Tornadoes per year Source, which is much lower than the averages observed in the United States. With an 11 year sample, there is an average of around 500 Tornadoes observed in the US per year of EF-1 Strength or higher.
Source
As you can see, Germany falls in one of the hot spots of tornado activity, right in the heart of Europe.
Despite an observed rise in Tornado Occurrences over the past few years, there are several logical explanations for why there are not actually more tornadoes. Advances in radar technology have increased our rate of detection for tornadoes. In addition to this, the way we classify our tornadoes has become much more advanced, and what may have been written off as a single tornado in the past may now possible be identified as multiple tornadoes. Source
Now that we have discussed tornadoes, we will talk about Hurricanes, and investigate whether or not they occur in Germany.
There are three main requirements for hurricane formation, Consistent heating of the surface, High Humidities, and Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds. These three factors are mostly present in the area around the equator, the tropics, which Germany is quite far from. There are several hurricane formation regions, including hurricanes in the Atlantic and East Pacific, Cyclones in the Indian Ocean near Australia, and finally, Typhoons off the coast of China and Indonesia
In the United States, as seen in the illustration above, hurricanes typically travel from the Southeast to the Northwest. This is the case for several reasons, including the Coriolis effect and the Westerlies. They are also affected by the positioning of high pressure systems. Although it is not impossible for hurricanes to reach Germany, they do not fall in a main hurricane formation region and they do not experience very many hurricanes. On average, 17.7 hurricanes hit the United States each decade, across all categories. Source
Hi Sean, my country is the Philippines, and I find our two countries to be pretty different when it comes to tornadoes. You mentioned that there are around 10 tornadoes per year in Germany, which you also mention is not that much compared to the United States. Although I agree with you on that, 10 tornadoes per year is still quite a bit considering how much land Germany takes up compared to the United States. In the Philippines, we only experience 10 tornadoes since 1968, which is 48 years! I also see that hurricanes do not really seem to be an issue for Germany, or Europe in general, for that matter, whereas in the Philippines, typhoons are very common and extremely disastrous, with Super Typhoon Haiyan costing about $2 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages and over 4,000 deaths! I guess that just means that the Philippines is much more dangerous to live in than Germany when it comes to hurricanes (or typhoons).
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post about hurricanes and tornadoes in Germany (even though hurricanes don't usually occur there). In the Solomon Islands, tornadoes are scarce, there was only one in 2008. But hurricanes, or cyclones as what they call it there, happen more often unlike in Germany.
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