A high resolution taken today by the NASA Modis satellite of the #NileBasin and the #MiddleEast is below.
The day started with storms in the East of the #HornOfAfrica#Yemen and the #KSA and got very busy over the day.
28 April Rain forecasts follow:
This first animation shows the beginning of a plume of water coming across the Sahara from the Atlantic. Forecasts indicate water from this plume will arrive in the #MiddleEast and #HoA in 10 days time.
This animation shows the West African Monsoon and the plume of précipitable water making its away across over the Sahara over the coming week.
Here's an view of the last three hours over the #HornOf Africa - with particularly vigorous rain visible over #Somaliland and #Yemen.
28th April 10-Day accumulated rain forecasts from the ECMWF, GFS and KMA forecast models are below. They are in agreement. Lots of rain across the entire #HornOfAfrica for the foreseeable.
And an image of #ArabianStorms storming across most of the Arabian Peninsula as the sun went down this evening. Medina, Riyadh, Basra, Dubai, Oman, Yemen and everywhere in between.
Two eyewitness #ArabianStorms videos and image tweets from @Arab_Storms follow. Both from #UAE which received its first rain for the month today.
And here is our first video of #EthiopiaRain! From Addis.
I would very much appreciate being DMed tweets with videos of rain and/or people in the rain from across the #HornOfAfrica to include in these daily forecast reports.
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.
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.
The #WestAfricaWaterPlume is rather spectacular in its presentation this morning. Roughly the size of Mexico and growing rapidly - a massive river of moisture which has just reached Italy.
This view shows satellite estimations of rainfall. Again the European @ECMWF weather model appears to have massively underestimated this event. Also on the face of what we can see so far it is turning Eastwards - which is not what many models were predicting.
Here are the current ECMWF predictions as of now, at midnight today, and at midnight Saturday and Sunday.
Today's 10-Day forecasts for North Africa [GFS, ECMWF, CMC, and KMA ]are now all expecting rain in West Africa as a #WestAfricaWaterPlume transports Atlantic water across the Sahara to the Mediterranean.
However they have divergent views on intensity and impact in EU/ME.
With moisture coming in across Sudan the #AranoamStorms along the Eastern side of the Red Sea have sparked up over the last few hours. But they are unlikely to have sufficient daylight left to strengthen significantly today.
Further south cloud and rain activity over the Horn of Africa has expanded to the West today with a line of clouds coming in from the Central African Republic, over Chad into the Sudan.
This thread will provide updates on the progress of the #WestAfricaWaterPlume as they come to hand. Sometimes animations, sometimes threads/commentaries....
The presentation of this Sahara water transit event this morning..... /1
@zoom_earth has a nifty measurement tool which can probably be used to estimate the quantity of water in transit. At this stage the plume is being fed both directly off the Atlantic and also by the West African Monsoon through Mali.