European Storm Forecast Experiment
The European Storm Forecast Experiment, known as ESTOFEX, is an initiative of a team of European meteorologists, and students in meteorology founded in 2002. It serves as a platform for exchange of knowledge about forecasting severe convective storms in Europe and elsewhere. It is a voluntary organisation and is currently unfunded. It aims to raise awareness and provide real-time education about severe weather forecasting.
It issues storm warnings on a daily basis. It also collects reports from the general public about severe convective weather incidents in order to validate its forecasts.
ESTOFEX forecasts are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license.
Its definitions of severe convective weather phenomena are one or several of the following :
severe:
- hail with a diameter of at least 2.0 cm
- tornado
- wind gusts with a speed of at least 25 m/s
- excessive rainfall of at least 60 mm.
extremely severe :
