Reports of a tornado that was supposed to have occurred quite nearby my home had inspired me to go and have a look at the respective site. On forehand, I was already quite suspicious about the idea that this had been a tornado based on the meteorological conditions. A deep, dry boundary layer was measured by the sounding at Stuttgart at 12:00 UTC, or about 40 minutes before the supposed tornado touched down at about 12:40 UTC or 14:40 local time. This is normally not very condive to tornadoes as is shown, among other studies, in Craven et al. (2002). However, such environments frequently produce downbursts, as precipitation has ample opportunity to evaporate in the dry air below the base of the storm cloud.
Here is a Skew-T showing the data of the Stuttgart sounding:
We cycled through the village and firstly didn't find any damage to speak of, except one snapped tree in someone's garden. Finally, on the west side of the village, we encountered some trees that were partially uprooted and partially snapped. The nearby houses had very mild damage to roofs, mainly consisting of some blown-off roof-tiles. In the nearby forest, more trees were uprooted, but as far as we could see, there were no parts where a majority of the tress was not standing anymore. The photo's of all this are shown below. On the attached I have draw the direction in which the trees were blown, which shows a divergent pattern, indicative of a downburst, rather than a tornado. I must add, that as a result of having a flat tire, I was not able to conduct more exhaustive survey. The most severe damage I could see were a few tall pine trees that were blown over, which I believe supports a F1 rating: i.e. in my opinion it was an F1 downburst, rather than a "major tornado".
Branch broken off in the east of the village
Tree damage along the road from Hambrücken to Graben-Neudorf, just on the edge of Hambrücken.
The most-displayed roof in Germany over the weekend. I have even seen this roof on the Dutch television! I am not looking too impressed, am I?
One of the trees in the forest that didn't make it through the storm.
Another tree, and me again.
And one that was uprooted instead of snapped.
Pieter Groenemeijer.