It looks like a colour-coded terror alert scale and meteorologically speaking, that’s exactly what it is. With climate change making conditions more unpredictable, national weather services from across the European Union have joined forces to create http://www.meteoalarm.eu a new website providing up-to-the-minute information on ‘extreme weather’ across the continent. The initiative, managed by Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, is designed to give Europeans a single source for details on flash floods, severe thunderstorms, gale-force winds, heat waves, blizzards and other violent weather that poses a threat to life or property. It also issues 24- and 48-hour warnings for heavy fog, extreme cold, forest fires and ‘coastal events’ such as high waves or severe tides. Although the European site officially will launch in Madrid, Spain, on March 23 World Meteorological Day it is already live on the web in test form. The Network of European Meteorological Services includes 20 countries and covers land stretching from Portugal to Sweden. Not every nation in the region is contributing, but the site hopes to bring others online eventually.

At the moment there are code red warnings in the north-west corner of Spain for ‘Coastal Events’ and in southern Austria for heavy snowfall.