UNIVERSITY OF READING

European windstorms are capable of producing devastating socioeconomic impacts. For example the windstorms Anatol, Lothar and Martin that struck in December 1999 inflicted 14bn USD worth of damage (Swiss Re, Sigma). Specifically, European windstorms are capable of causing power outages to millions of people, closing transport networks, uprooting trees, causing walls, buildings and other structures to collapse, which in the worst cases can result in dozens of fatalities (BBC News 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010)... The XWS 'eXtreme Wind Storms' catalogue is a freely available database of storm tracks and model-generated maximum 3 second gust storm footprints (both raw and re-calibrated) at 25km resolution for 50 of the most extreme windstorms to hit Europe in recent times. The catalogue currently covers the period October 1979 - March 2013. An estimate of the uncertainty of the gusts for each re-calibrated storm footprint is also provided... The catalogue is intended to be a..

Primary location: Exeter United Kingdom