Severe thunderstorms constitute a major weather hazard in Europe, with an estimated total damage of 5-8 billion euros each year nowadays. Even though there is an upward trend in damage due to increases in vulnerability and possibly also due to climate change impacts, a pan-European database of severe thunderstorm reports in a homogeneous data format did not exist until a few years ago. The development of this European Severe Weather Database (ESWD) provided the final impetus for the establishment of the European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) as a non-profit research organisation in 2006, after having started as an informal network in 2002. Our paper provides an overview of the first research results that have been achieved by ESSL. We start by outlining the reporting practice and quality-control procedure for the database, which has been enhanced by a major software upgrade in the fall of 2008. It becomes apparent that the state of reporting converges to a realistic description of the severe storms climatology, corroborating, for instance, earlier estimates of tornado occurrence in Europe. Nevertheless, a further rise in the number of reported events must be expected, even without the presence of any physical trends. The European tornado and damaging wind intensity distributions as a function of the Fujita scale are quantitatively similar to long-term distributions from the USA, except for a strong underreporting of weak events (F0) that still persists in Europe. In addition, the ESSL has recently proposed a new wind speed scale, the Energy-or "E-scale" which is linked to physical quantities and can be calibrated. Finally, we demonstrate the large potential of ESWD data use for forecast or nowcasting/warning verification purposes.

The European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) was founded in 2006 to advance the science and forecasting of severe convective storms in Europe. ESSL was a grassroots effort of individual scientists from various European countries. The purpose of this article is to describe the 10-yr history of ESSL and present a sampling of its successful activities. Specifically, ESSL developed and manages the only multinational database of severe weather reports in Europe: the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD). Despite efforts to eliminate biases, the ESWD still suffers from spatial inhomogeneities in data collection, which motivates ESSL’s research into modeling climatologies by combining ESWD data with reanalysis data. ESSL also established its ESSL Testbed to evaluate developmental forecast products and to provide training to forecasters. The testbed is organized in close collaboration with several of Europe’s national weather services. In addition, ESSL serves a central role among the European scientific and forecast communities for convective storms, specifically through its training activities and the series of European Conferences on Severe Storms. Finally, ESSL conducts wind and tornado damage assessments, highlighted by its recent survey of a violent tornado in northern Italy.

The social and economic impact of tornadoes in Europe is analyzed using tornado reports from the European Severe Weather Database between 1950 and 2015. Despite what is often assumed by the general public and even by meteorologists and researchers, tornadoes do occur in Europe and they are associated with injuries, fatalities, and damages, although their reported frequencies and intensities are lower compared with the United States. Currently, the threat of tornadoes to Europe is underestimated. Few European meteorological services have developed and maintained tornado databases and even fewer have issued tornado warnings. This article summarizes our current understanding of the tornado threat to Europe by showing the changes in tornado injuries and fatalities since the 1950s and by estimating for the first time the damages associated with European tornadoes. To increase awareness of tornadoes and their threat to Europe, we propose a strategy that includes 1) collaboration between meteorological services, researchers, and the general public toward a pan-European database; 2) development of national forecasting and warning systems and of pan-European convective outlooks; and 3) development by decision-makers and emergency managers of policies and strategies that include tornadoes.

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