<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-4243</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>The Burstinator: A Random Forest for Downburst Detection Using Radar and Lightning Data</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ackermann</surname>
<given-names>Florian</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Aregger</surname>
<given-names>Martin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Nerini</surname>
<given-names>Daniele</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6222-4294</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Balmelli</surname>
<given-names>Simone</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4825-2146</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hering</surname>
<given-names>Alessandro</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Gehring</surname>
<given-names>Josué</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8485-7973</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Feldmann</surname>
<given-names>Monika</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8123-5415</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Geography and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology – MeteoSwiss, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>now at: Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>30</day>
<month>09</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>31</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Florian Ackermann et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4243/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4243/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4243/egusphere-2026-4243.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4243/egusphere-2026-4243.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Operational weather forecasting in Switzerland currently lacks targeted diagnostic tools for severe convective gusts, leaving their occurrence and detailed physical properties insufficiently quantified. In this study, we perform case studies of wind gust-producing convective cells to link 3D C-band polarimetric radar signatures and lightning with gust occurrence. We find that reflectivity cores, &lt;em&gt;K&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;DP&lt;/sub&gt; cores, and mid-altitude radial convergence are linked to surface wind gusts. These associations informed the development of the Burstinator, a Random Forest machine-learning model designed to distinguish between thunderstorms with and without severe gusts. The Burstinator yields a 0.66 detection probability paired with a false alarm rate of 0.08, demonstrating superior skill over the baseline WDRAFT. Predictor importance analysis indicates that radar-based features are the top predictors. Finally, we apply the Burstinator to a two-year dataset of 5-min resolution radar data to characterize the spatial distribution of the convective gust frequency. Our findings highlight how integrating machine learning with dual polarization radar and lightning observations can advance convective wind detection and severe weather monitoring across Switzerland.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="31"/></counts>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>