Severe Storms Impact Sections of Eastern Spain! (credit: Gabriel Timbaler via Meteo Europe)

DISCUSSION: With much of western Europe positioned along and to the east of the approaching cold front associated with an intense extra-tropical low pressure system spinning over the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, there was a complex situation in place.  This interesting weather situation is best described by the fact that much of western Europe was positioned within the warm sector of the aforementioned low pressure system which promoted increased ascension of air parcels in these regions. With this substantial increase in the buoyancy of air parcels across this region, convective storms had a much easier time breaking through and opposing factors at play.  Therefore, as you can seen as an example in the image above (captured over in Sástago, Spain by Gabriel Timbaler), there was undoubtedly a healthy combination of vertical wind shear as well as atmospheric instability in place.  

This favorable convective combination helped to promote deep, rotating convective storms such as the supercell thunderstorm observed near the city of Sástago, Spain!  It goes without saying that this was a dangerous storm for those areas which were at some point positioned beneath the storm itself.  You can also see how there also appeared to be a shelf cloud beneath the more central part of the storm which can be found in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture above.  This indicated that there was most definitely a strong rotational presence within the storm since this is a feature which is often associated with tornado-producing supercell thunderstorms all over the world.  

To learn more about other high-impact weather events occurring across Europe, be sure to click here!

​©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz