Supercell Convective Environments in Spain based on ERA5: Hail and Non-Hail Differences

Abstract. Severe convective storms, in particular supercells, are occasionally responsible for a large number of losses of property and damages in Spain. This paper aims to study the synoptic configurations and pre-convective environments in a dataset of 262 supercells during 2011–2020 in Spain. The events are grouped into supercells with hail (diameter larger than 5 cm) and without hail and the results are compared. ERA5 reanalysis data are used to study the synoptic configurations and soundings related to the supercell events at the initial and centroid time. Moreover, temperature, convective available potential energy, convective inhibition, lifting condensation level, level of free convection, height of freezing level, wind shear and storm-relative helicity are determined for each event. The results show that supercells are more frequent in the Mediterranean coast during the warm season. There are statistically significant differences between hail and non-hail events in the mentioned thermodynamic and kinematic-related parameters analyzed, such as supercells with hail environments characterized by higher median values of most-unstable convective available potential energy than supercells without hail.