Climatology of Large Hail in Europe: Characteristics of the European Severe Weather Database

Large hail (greater than 2 cm in diameter) can cause devastating damage to crops and property, and can even cause loss of life. Because hail reports are often collected by individual countries, constructing a European18 wide large-hail climatology has been challenging to date. However, the European Severe Storm Laboratory’s European Severe Weather Database provides the only pan-European dataset for severe convective storm reports. The database is comprised of 62,053 large-hail reports from 40 C.E. to September 2020, yet its characteristics have not been evaluated. Thus, the purpose of this study is to evaluate hail reports from this database for the purposes of constructing a climatology of large hail. For the period 2000–2020, large-hail reports are most prominent in June, whereas large-hail days are most common in July. Large hail is mostly reported between 1300– 1900 local time, a consistent pattern since 2010. The intensity, as measured by maximum hail size, shows decreasing frequency with increasing hailstone diameter, and little change over the 20-year period. The quality of reports by country varies, with the most complete reporting being from central European countries. These results suggest that despite its short record, many indications are that the dataset represents some reliable aspects of European large-hail climatology, albeit with some limitations.