ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

Severe Weather Warnings in Europe: A Unified Approach

Severe weather warnings are issued by national meteorological services across Europe to alert the public and specific industry groups about impending severe weather conditions. These warnings, also known as watches or advisories, serve as a crucial tool for mitigating the impact of extreme weather events.

In Cyprus, the Department of Meteorology at the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Natural Resources issues Severe Weather Outlooks, Watches, and Warnings under a Code of Practice that enables others to distribute this information in the national interest. The New Zealand Meteorological Service (NZMS) uses a similar approach, issuing Severe Weather Outlooks, Watches, and Warnings based on specific types of dangerous weather conditions such as heavy rain, heavier snow, strong gales, and other weather likely to cause significant disruption.

The European Multi-Service Meteorological Awareness (EMA) initiative of EUMETNET and the MeteoAlarm portal provide a unified approach to severe weather warnings across Europe. MeteoAlarm aggregates official national alerts from 22 countries, including Cyprus, using pittograms with shared colors and symbols to support transfrontalier interpretation. This allows for a coherent understanding of the alert levels and their corresponding risks.

In Sweden, which does not experience as severe weather as some other countries, red events would normally not cause large international headlines. However, until 2021, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) used its own warning level terminology, Class 1, 2, and 3, to categorize severe weather conditions.

In Europe, a Weather Alert is issued when there is enough information indicating high probability of strong storms, hail, snow, strong winds under severe storms, extreme temperatures. The National Meteorological Service in the United States emits a "Significant Weather Alert" when hail stones are greater than 2 cm in diameter or winds reach at least 90 km/h.

MeteoAlarm is a website developed by EUMETNET with support from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to coordinate the issuance of alerts from adverse weather events. The countries represented include Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The alert levels presented by