Aerial drone footage indicates potential path of a tornado in Gröditz.
Small town Groditz in Saxony took a major hit during the extreme storm on Tuesday, with hints suggesting a possible tornado may have arisen in Landkreis Meissen. Weather experts, however, remain uncertain.
In Landkreis Meissen, the evening brought significant chaos, with indications of a tornado touchdown in the quaint town of Groditz. The Groditz city administrator's spokesperson shared footage from a drone survey, pointing to potential tornado damage.
The event sparked around 77 emergency responses within the town. Key infrastructures took a beating – ahigh-voltage power line and a railway track were compromised. Furthermore, the spokesperson reported damaged roofs, wrecked vehicles, and uprooted trees. Firefighters were still present on the scene the next day.
As of now, the certainty of a tornado in Groditz remains elusive. A team of analysts is still crunching the numbers, according to meteorologist Florian Engelmann from the German Weather Service (DWD). "Just because huge wind speeds and damages were observed, it doesn't mean a tornado definitely occurred," Engelmann noted. Yet, conditions for the formation of a tornado were present.
A wind shear of around 1.5 kilometers per hour, a low cloud base at roughly 800 to 1000 meters above ground level, and substantial wind variations on a smaller scale are essential for a tornado's rotational motion, Engelmann explained. Predicting tornados is tricky, but such weather occurrences in Germany are rare.
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Despite the international interest in the Groditz storm incident, the official classification as a tornado is yet to be confirmed. Nevertheless, saxony has seen an unprecedented series of extreme weather events, including this storm and the recent storms in other regions, which have led to widespread destruction and damages.
