The Oil Drum

There isn't really a good term for what happened during that storm - 'pocket hurricane' is my own invention.

It was an 'Orkantief' (literal translation - 'hurricane low' or more accurately, 'intense low-pressure system') which started in the Bay of Biscay and which then barrelled through France, Switzerland, and Germany. It was actually quite narrow and focused - but very, very powerful by any measure. There does not seem to have been any rotation of the storm, for example, and the temperature was only mildly above freezing.

But it lacked several 'normal' hurricane features - no real flooding, no real severe lightning.

But for a number of reasons, Germany was totally unprepared for what happened -
1. Dec 26 is part of the Christmas holidays - most everyone was at home, including the weather service employees and radio/TV news departments.
2. Hurricanes as such don't happen here - meaning that no one really had any idea what was happening - or more importantly, what was going to happen. I suspect this factor will play a very major role in the Persian Gulf.
3. The weather had been freezing around a week before the hurricane, but everything had thawed in the heavy rains in the days before the storm - this is a major reason why so many trees were uprooted - of course, about half of the trees which were destroyed simply snapped in half, but of the remaining half, if the ground had been more firm, they likely would have survived better.