Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 1–17, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1-2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. An 18-year climatology of derechos in Germany Christoph P. Gatzen1, Andreas H. Fink2, David M. Schultz3,4, and Joaquim G. Pinto2 1Institut für Meteorologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany 2Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Department Troposphere Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany 3Centre for Crisis Studies and Mitigation, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK 4Centre for Atmospheric Science, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK Correspondence: Christoph P. Gatzen (
[email protected]) Received: 18 July 2019 – Discussion started: 4 September 2019 Revised: 7 March 2020 – Accepted: 17 March 2020 – Published: Abstract. Derechos are high-impact convective wind events 1 Introduction that can cause fatalities and widespread losses. In this study, 40 derechos affecting Germany between 1997 and 2014 are analyzed to estimate the derecho risk. Similar to the Convective wind events can produce high losses and fatal- United States, Germany is affected by two derecho types. ities in Germany. One example is the Pentecost storm in The first, called warm-season-type derechos, form in strong 2014 (Mathias et al., 2017), with six fatalities in the region southwesterly 500 hPa flow downstream of western Euro- of Düsseldorf in western Germany and a particularly high pean troughs and account for 22 of the 40 derechos. They impact on the railway network. Trains were stopped due to have a peak occurrence in June and July.