Thread by @althecat

Today's #Sahara & #HornOfAfrica rainfall forecasts follow.

It is now two weeks till the first open democratic #Ethiopian election.

To open here's a high resolution satellite image of the Nile Basin from Cairo to Lake Victoria including Eastern Ethiopia where the #GERD dam is located, and where the Blue Nile - source of much of the Nile's flow - originates in Lake Tana (the heart shaped lake).

We will zoom in on the #HornOfAfrica starting with the wider picture. On the left side of this image you can see a #WesternSahara water transport event which is significantly impacting weather conditions in Europe. (See more in the attached thread )

This zoomed section shows the water transit event and its impact in terms of rainfall over Italy the Adriatic coast, Greece and the Aegean Sea.

Our first rainfall forecasts. 10 day forecasts from the CMC, KMA, GFS and ECMWF models. There is an increasingly large level of disagreement between the two most extreme models CMC and ECMWF.

Note the CMC forecast of lots of #DesertRain north of the 15o Nth. latitude line.

We move east to the #HornOfAfrica. There are now strong westerlies blowing in from the North West over Oman these are setting of convection over the mountains from Yemen up the Red Sea Coast, in Taif #KSA, and Oman.

10-Day rainfall forecasts for June 7th of the #HornOfAfrica including, #Somalia, #Somaliland, #Djibouti, #Ethiopia and parts of #Sudan and #SouthSudan.

Note the fourth forecast is a 12 day KMA forecast. There is again a wide range of opinion between the three models.

This animation is a close up from earlier in the day today. The impact of the north easterly winds is significant.

Here are 3-day #HornOfAfrica rainfall forecasts from the same three models.

I have paused rainfall forecasts for now for the Arabian Peninsula for the past few days in deference to this announcement from the Saudi Arabian Govt.

However I also note that this report indicates that this ban comes into effect in six months time.

arabnews.com/node/1866626/s…

It is worth noting that none of the models whose forecasts I have been regularly posting since April have been doing a particularly good job at actually predicting rainfall in the peninsula of late anyway.

Here is an animation of today's cloud activity on the Peninsula.

To conclude today a wrap up of amazing videos of storm activity from around the world from @Arab_Storms.

Starting with a video taken today in Oman.

.. and three still images also from Oman.

Spain has been experiencing some pretty extraordinary storms of late. Here you see a line of clouds coming in over Torredonjimeno Andalusia.

Here you can see a few of those Spanish storms as pictured from Space. These were further North West on June 5th.

The following day storms caused this flooding in Murcia Spain. Credit @MeteoAltiplano