An overview of tornado and waterspout events in Catalonia (2000-2019)

Abstract

Tornado climatologies are essential to enhance our knowledge about their frequency and spatial distribution, together with their damage path characteristics. Due to their small spatiotemporal scale, tornado detection is strongly linked to visual observations. Therefore, social networks have become one of the most important sources of severe weather reports during the present century, including tornadoes, improving their detection and increasing the number of observed cases compared to previous decades. This article presents an analysis of tornado and waterspout events reported between 2000 and 2019 in Catalonia (NE Iberian Peninsula), one of the southern European regions where these phenomena are most frequent. The study includes 105 tornadoes and 329 waterspouts reported in a 32,000 km2 area, and therefore, it presents one of the highest tornado and waterspout densities in the Mediterranean basin according to recent climatologies. Remote-sensing tools such as weather radar, lightning detection and satellite imagery have been used to validate each event. Moreover, fieldwork performed after several tornado cases and the use of high-resolution aerial imagery have provided information to characterise damage paths, including the length and width of the damage swath and the maximum intensity according to the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Finally, a list of the analysed events is provided for further research.