Minutes of 24th Annual Meeting of the Working Group on Co-operation Between European Forecasters (WGCEF) Monday 12th – Tuesday 13th of November 2018 BY14 Hotel in Tel Aviv By Christian Csekits, ZAMG (chair) and Jos Diepeveen KNMI (vice-chair)

LAINE, Mikko - FMI/Finland PALJAK, Taimi - Estonian Weather Service PATERSON, Laura - UK Met Office/Great Britain PATKAI , Zsolt - OMSZ/Hungary RAZY, Alissa - Israel Meteorological Service REY, Jaime - AEMET/Spain ROULET, Bernard - Meteo-France SANDEV, Marjan - Czech Hydrometeorologi- cal Institute SAVIR, Amit - Israel Meteorological Service SKELBAEK, Michael - DMI/Denmark STAV, Nir - Director of Israel Meteorological Service TROISI, Antonio - Italian Meteorological Service VANHAMEL, Thomas - RMI/Belgium List of Participants (in alphabetical order): BLAAUBOER, Dick - Eumetnet BRAININ, Evgeny - Israel Meteorological Service Monday, 12th of November CSEKITS, Christian - ZAMG/Austria Session I ˝Introduction˝: CUSACK, Evelyn - Met Éireann/Ireland DAVIDOFF, Oren - Israel Meteorological * Welcome Address Director of IMS Nir Stav Service Nir Stav tells us about the history of IMS and the DIEPEVEEN, Jos - KNMI/The Netherlands important role of Ben Gurion in establishing the HEWSON, Tim - ECMWF weather service, particularly for aviation forecasting. HOIKKANEN, Marjo - FMI/Finland Nowadays IMS is active in a wide range of sectors. JAMESON, Stephanie - UK Met Office/Great * Opening words (Christian, Jos) Britain LETESTU, Andre-Charles - MeteoSwiss/ * Welcome of the new WGCEF members (Jos and Switzerland Christian) KALIN, Lovro - DHMZ/Meteorological and * Agree agenda and review actions from last Hydrometeorological Service of Croatia meeting (Jos and Christian)

6 The European Forecaster Session II ˝Updates since the last – Higher resolution (32km from 80km, ocean 0.25 from 1, sea ice model) meeting : ˝ – More recent reference period for anoma- * Round table: participants introduce themselves lies, to help address non-stationarity (climate and give an update on new developments within change) issues. their NMSs (5 minutes each) • New Model cycle 45r1 went live in Jun 2018 Cristian Csekits/ZAMG – Improved physics, better rainfall near coasts in “warm rain” situations • ZAMG are participating in the ARISTOTLE II – Lightning flash density forecasts included Project which delivers multi-hazard information to the ERCC (Emergency Response Coordination – HRES now coupled to ocean, so SST changes Centre); Start: November 2018. according to overlying weather. • Migration work for the relocation of the next • INCA: forecast data from AROME (instead of ECMWF supercomputer in Bologna is gathering ALARO) from end of 2018 onwards pace… • New thunderstorm guidance bulletin for internal • New Web-based Forecast User Guide released users (maybe presentation for 2019). in May 2018 – unrestricted access. • Projected restructuring of one shift (more inter- • ENS and HRES Vertical Profiles are now avai- national weather forecasts or more activities on lable in ecCharts. social media; more details in 2019). • “Weather Cloud” initiative started. Evelyn Cusack (MET EIREANN) Robert Hausen (DWD) • 12 members Ensemble high-resolution (2.5km) has become operational. Model is 54 hour and en- • Issue of warnings for west Germany switched from sembles are 36 hours. Offenbach to the regional office in Essen. Regio- • We are hiring 8 meteorologists - interview panel nal expertise across the whole of Germany is now took place in July, but no one has arrived yet! under control/guidance of supervisor/lead forecas- ter in Offenbach. • We are setting up a Flood Forecasting Center. Hiring 6 hydromets (3 so far). • Fusion of aviation and general weather forecas- ting in Essen, looking to prove a similar concept • Monthly forecaster/NWP’ers meeting….very for Berlin and Munich. useful. Sometimes lively. Older forecasters resis- ting ensembles! (ECMWF course in February). • The forecasting headquarters in Offenbach will now focus more on international activities and is- Jos Diepeveen (KNMI) sue of user-orientated products (focus on severe weather events). • Major KNMI project: development of a new web- based Met. Work Station: Geoweb. Other Euro- • After a successful period of evaluation, ICON- pean NMS's are also interested. EPS went operational in early 2018. • KNMI received extra funding from the ministry Veronika Hladnik (EARS) this year to keep basic services on a proper level, • New web page www.vreme.si with hourly fore- with possibility for development to an Early War- cast which is nice for use for smart phones. ning System. However, budget-planning for 2019 is still difficult. • Internal project for new subjective products for special groups of users is in progress. • On the 8th of March, International Women's Day, we had a completely female operational shift. • Small group starting to produce audio and/or video recordings. Tim Hewson (ECMWF) Lovro Kalin (DHMZ) • New seasonal forecast system SEAS5 went live in Nov 2017 • Small group starting to produce audio and/or video

The European Forecaster 7 recordings. fully employed, some still on appren- developed in FMI to ease the production of Signi- tice), age structure changed - generation shift. ficant Weather Charts together with SMHI in Swe- den. • Still problems with infrastructure (operational room, inadequate facilities) • We have started to use Slack as in-house chat and team message platform. Aviation unit is using – refurbishment needed, new building expected Slack to communicate (SWC, Sigmets) with other in 2022. Scandinavian and Baltic aviation units. • IBL VW visualisation is fully operational, whilst forecast production is currently in progress - ex- • Since last autumn, aviation forecasters have been pected fully in Spring 2019. participating in weather meetings in Helsinki Airport operations center, together with airport stakehol- – new products (tailored, automated end pro- ders, to help plan actions to mitigate the effects of ducts, tailored diagnostic/forecasting parame- high-impact snowfalls and thunderstorms. ters). • The FMI is participating in the ARISTOTLE (All • Warnings improvements (more elements, cold Risk Integrated System TOwards Trans-bounda- waves introduced this winter, demand for County ry hoListic Early-warning) Project which delivers based warnings, automation, impact based, multi-hazard information to the ERCC (Emergen- thresholds improvements...). cy Response Coordination Centre). As a backup • New web page meteo.hr leader of the weather hazard group after UKMO, we are also leading the group ten weeks per year. • Forecasters communicate via Slack, though still await the use of other social networks. • The FMI is leading the PECASUS (Pan-Euro- pean Consortium for Aviation Space weather User Mikko Laine (FMI) Services) consortium, which is aiming to provide information on space weather that has the po- • Regular, twice a month, verification meetings tential to affect communications, navigation and between meteorologists, model developers and health of passengers and crew. post-processing method developers. Also we have nominated one meteorologist to work as contact • We are starting to collect a database of impacts person between model developers and forecas- of severe weather events to further increase the ters. In addition some of our forecasters are more accuracy of impact based warnings. engaged with the post-processing method deve- lopment. In both cases above worktime is shared Andre Charles Letestu (Meteoswiss) between development and forecasting units. • A new law has been approved by Parliament, • We have integrated crowdsourcing app to our which applies from the 1st January 2019. One of weather app. We are collecting weather ob- the main aims of this is to strongly reduce the price servations from citizens (e.g. precipitation, ice of observed and forecast data. thickness, snow depth, hail, slippery pedestrian • A new project has been launched which is aimed weather). Meteorologists can monitor these ob- at developing a concept to communicate probabi- servations directly from our meteorological works- listic forecasts to the public. A number of products tation (SmartMet). now include probabilities, especially on the web- • Tailored products for our customers: weather site and in the App. chat, Webex briefings (virtual meeting) e.g. for ice • MeteoSwiss have published documents about breakers & pilots and electricity companies. climatic scenarios in Switzerland (CH2018) and • We have increased our activity in social media. their resulting probable effects on tourism, eco- We have reorganised our shifts to get more time nomy, agriculture, civil protection and welfare; for social media tasks: regular tweets in Twitter, events have been organized in various locations weather related videos in YouTube. We can also in Switzerland. Several products are currently pro- create weather videos directly from our worksta- duced manually, but it is planned to produce these tion. automatically using data4web. This is a forecast data base computed using model data, and input • The aviation weather unit has launched a tool from the forecaster.

8 The European Forecaster • A MeteoSwiss twitter channel will be launched ‒ Programme of voluntary redundancies. on the 1st March. There will be one for each lan- • What this means for forecasting – Making ope- guage. At least one tweet a day should be sent. rational work more efficient, developing tools to • Continuous snow measurement (every 10 mi- cope with future NWP, object/event approach, nutes) will soon be available on the MeteoSwiss ways of working, reducing unsociable hours, im- automatic measurement network. A test is current- proved visualisation. ly in progress at Geneva airport. • Meanwhile, we continue to face resourcing • Two projects concerning the future of COSMO challenges. models have started or about to start. ModInterim • Science changes – recent PS41, MOGREPS UK began early 2018 and will finished late 2020.The hourly cycling being trialled. goal is to produce an ensemble model from the analysis to 5 days with a horizontal resolution in- • Climate updates – WSSP China, ARRCC Pro- creasing seamlessly from 1.1 to 2.2 km. New ob- gramme with Dfid, IPCC contributions, CSSP Bra- servations will be added into the assimilation sche- zil. me and a new scheme (KENDA) will be applied. • Contract changes – roads, Heathrow, M&S, The second project, called ICON-22 will start mid- Gatwick, new Beta Website. 2019 and will finish late 2022. It will replace the COSMO models by a new version calculated on Amit Savir (IMS) an icosahedral grid developed by the DWD. • Automatic weather station on one ship. • A post processing project (PostprocVeri) has just started - its aim is to establish probabilistic and • AMDAR data: start in December 2018 (El-Al car- spatial postprocessing for several parameters on rier). all weather prediction time scales, taking into ac- • New website coming in early 2019 (in Hebrew, count all available observations and models. Out- Arabic and English language). put will be automatic and seamless in time.

Zsolt Patkai (OMSZ) Taimi Paljak (EMHI) • A country-wide hail protection system was started • The meteorological and hydrological Network is in May 2018: automated, with only 3 stations providing manual observations. – HMS offers special meteorological forecasts: hail probability maps. (0-30%: yellow, 30-60%: • Close co-operation with civil protection authori- orange, >60%: red). ties (thresholds of warnings, further development of service). – 5 new colleagues were hired for this task. – Hail protection period: 1. May - 30. September. • Development of HARMONIE with resolution 2.5 km. • New social media role was started in September 2018: • Development of road model. – Working hours: 8-18 h. • Use of SENTINEL data for ice chart on the plat- – Responsibilities: form QGIS. • Making a daily weather forecast video on • Meteorological Workstation SMARTMET – im- YouTube. All the graphics and images are made plementation of which comes under the framework with our visualisation system. Flexible: one may of the CESAR project. decide how many and what type of graphics to use. Laura Paterson (MetOffice) •Posting weather information on HMS • New CE, Prof Penelope Endersby and Chair, Facebook. Both domestic and worldwide weather Rob Woodward, appointed. news. • Replying to Facebook messages related • Large scale transformation and efficiency project to forecasts. underway • Serving TV channels who want to make – Large scale infrastructure updates reports on the weather.

The European Forecaster 9 • After 10 years without, a 30% pay rise is expec- Bernard Roulet (Meteo France) ted for staff next year. However there may be a possible reduction of staff in 2019. • Climatology – All databases migrated from ORACLE to Vida Raliene (LHMS) PostgreSQL • Re-organisation has been taking place since 20th ‒ Implementation of a management tool for cli- March 2018 (with the reduction of staff and full au- mate archives. tomation of meteorological stations). Fortunately, • Observations the best specialists did not leave the LHMS. Staff were moved to work in a newly created Research – New radar mosaic SERVAL : all software and Development department. treatments available at T+2mn • General weather, marine and hydro forecasters ‒ New radar band C Doppler double polarisa- were joined into one unit in 2018, so we learn: tion at Ajaccio/ Alata, 780 m western coast of Corsica. – to work together (physically in one room, ad- justing to new areas of job) • Models – to use reduced amounts of information about – AROME overseas (Lesser Antilles, La Reu- weather phenomena (as we now have no ob- nion-Indian Ocean, New-Caledonia and Po- servers in meteostations, no volunteer institu- lynesia-Pacific Ocean) could be extended up to tion). 72 hours. • Reduction of staff leads to reduced possibilities ‒ Ensemble assimilation has been implemented for external training, especially where training is in AROME and PE AROME. required to use the classroom. ‒ Developments for coupling AROME and • Weather and hydro forecasters are unused to a ocean model are ongoing. lot of regulations (bureaucratic problems) asso- • Production ciated with aeronautical weather services. – Work in progress to build an automatic pro- • No new forecasting methods or tools were in- duction line of fields from D to D+14 under pro- troduced, just videoconferences between remote babilistic form. units. Introduction of videoconferences with main • Vigilance customers (Fire and Rescue Department, Com- mand and Coordination board, Situation coordina- – Two red events tion division).  Snow 28/02/18 Herault Jaime Rey (AEMET)  Heavy rainfall 15/10/18 – Work in progress for producing an impact • CAP 1.2 became operational on 18th of June based rain-flooding vigilance (working group 2018 at national level, but due to visualisation pro- Regional Forecasters-Hydrologists). blems, it is still not visible in Meteoalarm. ‒ Developments start on new software to allow • Storm Naming season 1 was a success. Sea- vigilance over smaller areas (infra-departemen- son 2 just started with “Adrian”, named by Mé- tal). téo-France. • Super Computer • TTwo important meetings related to forecasting ‒ Renewal process initiated: answers from ma- were held in the last couple of months: nufacturers expected by March 2019. – 6th National Symposium on Forecasting. 17 – ‒ Expected target is a 5 multiplication factor but 19 September. perhaps only 4. ‒ HARMONIE-Users Workshop. 6 – 7 No- ‒ Implementation target : before the end of vember. 2020.

10 The European Forecaster Marjan Sandev (CHMI) ‒ Astronomical product (short term forecast of clouds: structure, type, total amount; transpa- • New application Alert Editor for issuing of meteo- rency of the atmosphere; “seeing-index” based rological, hydrological and air pollution warnings on turbulence) (development phase). (within software Visual Weather f. ‒ Co-operation with regional hydrological agen- • New warning web pages. cies (drought index, QPE and other radar/preci- • Changes at distribution warnings - CAP to FRS pitation products) (semi-operational phase). CR. • General news concerning the weather office • Mobile application (Android, IOS). – Space weather formations held. • Media department for the whole CHMI (from ‒ New head of department: David Dehenauw September 2018). replaces Fabian Debal. ‒ Open door days held in September 2018. • Work on all social networks now comes under ‘one roof’ (facebook, twitter, you tube). Session II "Updates since the last meeting": • A new concept of employee training is being de- * Discussion of the 23rd WGCEF Newsletter veloped within the CHMI - the MOODLE system (Bernard) will be the main tool for training. * WGCEF website and social media report (Andre- • A new supercomputer for model Aladin, from Fe- Charles) bruary 2019 with horizontal resolutions of 2.4 km. • EUMETNET Update (Dick) • Work continues on the project of “Prevention of Dick gives us an interesting overview of all EU- security risks caused by extreme meteorological METNET activities. Details can be viewed in his phenomena - their specification and innovation of presentation. forecasting and warning systems with respect to climate change”. • EUMETNET Task Team on Storm- • After six years of preparation, a new Central Naming Update (Evelyn) Forecasting Office will be built (from December The west and southwest storm-naming groups 2018). have made quite a lot of progress over the last year, with the members in the two groups co-ope- Michael Skelbaek (DMI) rating more and more. • Extra budget funds. There is need for structure. • Model shift and new models introduced. Co-ordination of storm naming using an (internet) platform (Meteo Alarm): using such a platform to • New staff, app & homepage. share understanding around which low has been • Twitter Award. named could take away a lot of administrative work for the forecaster. • We are moving! Following contact with the University of Berlin, it Thomas Vanhammel (RMIB) is understood that they do not currently wish to cooperate with the EUMETNET initiative. • New products and developments th ‒ Road forecasting model implemented (ope- Tuesday, 13 of November rational test phase this winter, operational fore- casting next year). • 15:15 - 16:15 Session III ‘Presenta- tions: Social Media’ (20 minutes each ‒ Automation of warning verification (develop- including discussion): ment phase) Michael Skelbaek: “Changing forecaster role and ‒ “forecast database”: forecasters choose the communication to the public” “model of the day” that will feed all our outgoing products (development phase). In Denmark we see a growing need for the fore-

The European Forecaster 11 caster to communicate about the weather to so- We will describe how the media team work clo- ciety and emergency management, rather than sely with other parts of the Office to determine the “just” making a text forecast. Through a lot of content we produce, as well as how we vary our training our forecasters are ready to make small approach depending on the channel being used video clips, tweets and more general use of diffe- and the demographic of that channel’s user. rent media platforms. The forecasters did actually win a special language prize for the best tweets in Finally, we will look at how this has increased our Denmark 2018! To the professional user our main public reach, before touching upon what we might focus is nowcasting, and communicating uncer- anticipate for the future in terms of our use of so- tainties and impacts. Besides that we have taken cial media. some action to make our met office more resilient to the future. Every forecaster is now capable of Tim Hewson: "Recent and upcoming doing aviation forecasts which is important due developments at ECMWF" to the growing cooperation between the Nordic • New seasonal forecast system SEAS5 went live countries and the Baltic countries in NAMCON. in Nov 2017

Jaime Rey: “The use of social media for warning – Higher resolution (32km from 80km, ocean dissemination in Spain” 0.25° from 1°, sea ice model) Weather warnings in Spain, produced with web – More recent reference period for anoma- software, are disseminated through a data pro- lies, to help address non-stationarity (climate cessing unit and a warning database. The use of change) issues +… a message broker software enables the dissemi- • New Model cycle 45r1 went live in Jun 2018 nation of automatic messages in social networks. – Improved physics, better rainfall near coasts in Aemet publishes in a Blog, Youtube and Face- “warm rain” situations book on a regular basis, but Twitter is currently the leading Social Network, with more than 175,000 – Lightning flash density forecasts included subscribers. – HRES now coupled to ocean, so SST changes The impact in social networks of the first Storm according to overlying weather. Naming season for the SW group was studied. By analysing the total number of visits to Aemet´s Alissa Razy: "Using Lidar ceilometer and its pro- web page and the impact of Tweets with the hash- ducts for nowcasting" tag #BorrascaName we concluded that Storm Naming helps with the spreading of information Lidar information was very useful for nowcasting about the severe event and associated warnings fog conditions for the Tel Aviv airport. Also lidar in- formation is used for diagnosing dust events and through mass media. fire events. Stephanie Jameson: “Met Office: The use of social Andres-Charles Letestu: "New products provided media: Communicating Meteorological Informa- by MeteoSwiss for Geneva Airport" tion to the public“ This presentation looks briefly at how we have de- For many years MeteoSwiss has provided support veloped our current approach to using social media for aviation. to communicate weather information to the public. Recently collaboration has increased between it- self, air traffic control (Skyguide), and the opera- This presentation looks briefly at how we have tion centre at Geneva airport. developed our current approach to using social Past MeteoSwiss products have been re-thought media to communicate weather information to the and new ones created in order to best respond to public. the needs of the airport. Here are examples of some new and updated fo- In 2015, we, at the Met Office, set-up our own in- recasts: house operational media team which enabled us to move to a 24/7 Twitter platform, expand further • A thunderstorm forecast is sent to air traffic into Facebook and also create accounts on Ins- controllers to enable delays to be anticipated. Te- tagram and Snapchat, amongst other channels. lephone contact with the controllers provides fur-

12 The European Forecaster ther with the forecaster if necessary. Bernard Roulet: "Severe snow event in Herault on the 28th of February 2018 • The Dashboard; this consists of a platform on " which radar, satellite, and forecasts of various me- Storm Ana produced an active snow event on teorological parameters are displayed including the 28th of February 2018 across southeastern the temperature and state of the runway. France, especially over Herault (department Probabilities of fog, thunderstorms or snow are n°34). Forecast model outputs (ECMWF, ARPE- added by the forecaster. GE and AROME) are studied from medium range The same product is displayed in both the opera- to very short range and then compared to obser- tion centre at Geneva Airport (APOC),and in the vations. Orange, then red, vigilance for snowfalls forecasting room at MeteoSwiss. were issued by Meteo France during this event. Despite these alerts, major troubles occurred near • The charter forecast enables APOC to predict the town of Montpellier, particularly on motorway delays due to weather hazards in departure airpo- A9. Attempt to explain and provide a conclusion. rts, and on roads to ski resorts, during busy winter weekends. Thomas Vanhamel: "The 2018 drought Warnings of lightning, strong winds and snow are in Belgium" also issued for the Geneva Airport area. Drought is a creeping natural hazard that is not • Finally, since 2016, a low level significant weather bound to specific climates. It can occur even in chart over the Alps has been produced every three temperate maritime climates, like that of Belgium. hours in collaboration between Austrocontrol and Climate models project an overall increase in pre- MeteoSwiss. The two centres produce this chart cipitation in northern Europe and a decrease in simultaneously using the same tool. southern Europe. Belgium, lying in the transition zone, could possibly see an increase in the oc- Mikko Laine: "Forecast verification at FMI" currence of spring / summer droughts, similar to Constant forecast verification is key to further the ones that occurred in 2017 and 2018. Adap- improving our forecasts and our post processing tation measures to cope with these persistent methods. dry weather regimes must therefore be conside- red. A first step in adaptation is the monitoring of Verification is a way to understand diffe- droughts. rences between models and a way to In light of this, the Flemish regional government find the best performing model in a current weather established a “drought committee” in Autumn 2017 situation. It is also a good way to find new model that gathers observations and indices concerning errors and to cope with known ones. Different ope- droughts, and decides on a drought state. This in- rational units at FMI verify different things, e.g. the formation is then used by decision makers to de- aviation unit is interested in cloud ceiling, visibi- cide whether measurements (restrictions) should lity and low cloud. Safety Weather Services ve- be taken. The RMI is indirectly involved in this rify high wind speeds, and the hit rate of weather process, since it delivers several products to the warnings. At tailored weather services, we verify Flemish hydrological service, i.e. SPI, radar pro- temperature and precipitation forecasts. ducts. In light of this global change, these kind of We are using two verification tools at FMI, both co-operations between meteorological services are developed by FMI. and other institutes could become increasingly im- With "Verification Tool" we can do both daily veri- portant in tackling difficult problems that concern fication and also monthly and yearly verification. society in an interdisciplinary manner. We can verify different models, post-processing methods, and also weather data from our insti- Christian Csekits: "Severe rain and storm event in tute and weather data from our neighboring natio- Austria in October 2018 nal institutes. We can visualise data with tables, " charts and maps. The period of the 27th to 30th of October 2018 was With "Personal Trainer" our meteorologists can a very extreme one for severe weather phenome- compare their own forecasts to the average of all na in Austria, as well as in many other parts of Cen- forecasts. We can visualise data with tables and tral Europe. Firstly, a persistent low over the Gulf charts. "Personal Trainer" is still under develop- of Genoa and associated frontal system caused ment. heavy rainfall in south-western parts of Austria.

The European Forecaster 13 After a short break of 12 hours the next low de- Trough”. Their operational database is also re- veloped over the Western Mediterranean Sea and commended. propagated over Northern Italy and Switzerland - The UK Met Office run internal testbeds, but also towards the Benelux States. This led to another send people to the US to participate in testbeds period of heavy rain in the same area as the first there. rain event. Total precipitation of up to 650 mm was observed within 72 hours, which is 2 to 3 times - IMS offer an exchange of expertise and would the monthly sum of precipitation for this region. like to be involved in European developments. Due to the strong pressure gradient, severe wind - DMI are running a training day on icing condi- gusts of around 100 km/h in the valleys and up to tions and are looking for someone who can provi- 180 km/h in the mountains occurred. The perfor- de training on this topic. mance of different models for various time steps is shown and the procedure of severe weather - ECMWF e-learning modules: what is the ba- warnings issued by the Austrian Meteorological lance between on-line sessions, test-beds/hands Service is illustrated. Luckily the impacts on so- on sessions/meetings or conferences? Feedback ciety and infrastructure were less dramatic then suggests a combination of different methods is expected as a result of the early delivery of red fine! Exchange of ideas and knowledge through warnings and the excellent co-operation with the meeting face to face is most preferred, but maybe national emergency response center, army, police not that practical. and fire brigade. - Training in Tropical Meteorology for ZAMG fore- casters (Aristotle II) Antonio Triosi: Nightmare week in Italy end of October and beginning of November. Session VI "Closure of the meeting": A typical upper air cut-off low was giving high th impact weather, especially because of a conver- The next WGCEF meeting will be in Dublin (26 th gence line in the “warm sector” and a comma, as- and 27 of September 2019) sociated to a PVA max, behind the cold front. With thanks to Evelyn/Met Eireann in advance for rd During November 3 in Millicia, there were 12 their kind hospitality! casualties as a result of a severe flooding event. In total 32 casualties were counted, due to the im- - Date to be decided, two days on Thursday and pacts from a variety of weather parameters. Friday at the end of September/beginning of Oc- tober (since decided as the 26th and 27th of Sep- Jos Diepeveen: Estimating storm impact using a tember 2019). storm number - The suggestion for 2 complete days was well re- ceived. At KNMI a way of ranking strong wind storms is being used, using an objective method by San- Tips for next meeting/remarks: der Tijm: “The storm number.” Fact sheets have - Better preparation, with suggested questions, is been made using this ranking for the top 10 most required for the discussion sessions! severe storms, describing the impact on different user groups. These fact sheets can be used to - Online participants are also welcome to do pre- estimate impact more objectively in the case of a sentations if technically possible. We should bear future severe storm situation. in mind that technical problems are always pos- sible. - Newsletter articles: please ask colleagues if they Session IV "WGCEF Discussion Forum": would also like to contribute. Discussion on “training activities and sharing ex- - EMS sessions are recommended, so send ar- pertise”: ticles. The call for papers will be at the beginning - ESSL-testbed is recommended by a colleague of next year. from IMS. IMS learn a lot from EU co-operation. IMS can provide unique knowledge, but also have Jos Diepeveen nd Christian Csekits and some questions about the handling of various Chairpersons WGCEF synoptic phenomena, for example the “Red Sea 14th of November 2018

14 The European Forecaster