In the world of Africa/Europe/MiddleEast weather today has been quite spectacular, in a new and revealing way. And the star of the show has been the #WestAfricaWaterPlume.
See also.. a thread from this morning....
.. and for a full backgrounder this thread from April 27th.
The plume has now stolen the European stage entering stage left and heading directly towards Moscow. The precipitation animation below is from @Meteoblue. Rain reports are not 100% accurate as they are satellite & not radar driven.
But as for #DesertRain?
There has been a lot.
Another view, same scene from @zoom_earth....
While there is a gap between the African Plume and the mushroom shaped area of storms headed to Moscow, they are moving in lock-step.
This image is from April 19th. The last time this happened. Similarities are obvious, but for the incurious:
In both events we see a percussion cup of storms on the bottom of the storm complex which is being pushed by the plume. In both the pushing is causing precipitation.
Its worth considering the differing scales of these two events.
The first one was pretty disruptive. It's a big part of why its still frosty and 2 degrees in the morning in Western France on the last day of Spring
This event is much much bigger.
And how long will it last?
The precipitable water forecasts say we can expect the 1000km wide river of aerial water to keeps flowing till at least Tuesday.
Africa:
Europe:
We now have a new 90 hour ECMWF forecast to midnight Monday - and its still going strong to the end.....
The 10-day 30th April 00hr forecast which is still fresh shows what looks like a firehose of West African wet heading north till Thursday midday. And it doesn't stop then, it just slows down and changes direction.
Ends.... for now.
(continuing story)
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