Thread by @althecat

#Carracas #Carribean #ExtremeWeather #WX #ClimateChangeNOW update Thread.

#Invest91L may not be a tropical storm yet, let alone a hurricane, and it may not even become one. But it is already having hurricane like rain impacts in Venezeula, and in particular in Carracas.

This morning there is a colossal 2.8 million km2 area of intense convection over the Nth South America/Amazon rain forest south of #Invest91L

Here is a view of the dominant convective system in all of this which has formed directly south of #Invest91L - and is shaped like a pine cone.

The scale of this is a bit mindblowing.
1. The full area of convective activity is 2.8 million km2 (a bit smaller than the size of India)
2. The area of the pinecone shaped storm complex currently over Venezeula producing very heavy rain is is 346,000 km2 the size of Germany.

In August there was some spectaular flooding in Caracas. See videos in these two tweets. What is happening now is likely a lot worse than this, and over a much much larger area.
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This animation shows the rlationship between #Invest91L and this storm. Its south of the invest and ahead of it. The sun is just rising and as it gets hotter the convection is likely to increase.

A @Meteoblue rain estimation for the full area. LINK >> meteoblue.com/en/weather/tod…

Here's perhaps a more realistic looking rain radar image for the area this morning. Still a lot of rain over Caracas

Meteoblue's forecasts show considerably less rain than the satellite and radar data suggest.

Here's another radar trace. From Accuweather.