Simulations of a November thunderstorm event by two mesoscale models in the south Alpine region

Two numerical models have been used to investigate the development of a thunderstorm event that took place on November 7th , 2004, in the northern Italy. A cold air mass moved from the northeast to the Alps and the Po valley, while the temperature in the lower layers was quite warm. A thunderstorm with rain and hail developed in the central and eastern part of Italy\u27s subalpine region. In this work it\u27s analyzed some aspects of the thunderstorm dynamics at the mesoscale using two different models. The first one is the semi-implicit, semi-lagrangian non-hydrostatic mesoscale spectral model of CEM (SISL-MSM); the second one is the Meso-NH anelastic nonhydrostatic numerical model by the french Laboratoire de Aerologie and MeteoFrance. Both are nested into our European Spectral Model which provides the boundary conditions. In this study, different horizontal resolutions have been considered both for SISL-MSM and Meso-NH. The work is focused on the comparison of the results obtained from the different runs, including a test-case without orography to examine the role played by the Alps in the development and evolution of the thunderstorm