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.
This animation shows the broad picture:
- The #WestAfricaWaterPlume in the West
- It's impact in Europe over the Aegean and Turkey
- Storms in the Middle East
- Clouds carrying water from Central into Sudan.
- A northerly cloud flow from the Gulf across Iran into Central Asia
29th 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.
This animation shows a broad view across the #HornOfAfrica to the Central African Republic including a close up of clouds crossing Chad from the center of Africa bringing moisture across Northern Sudan.
Two eyewitness #ArabianStorms videos and image tweets from @Arab_Storms follow. Both from #UAE which received its second day of rain today - a lot more than yesterday.
The image above from the #UAE is eerily similar to videos we have seen recently from Saudi Arabia of overflowing dams. This one provides a sense of the intensity of today's storm over #Oman the #UAE and a fairly large area of #Yemen and #KSA.
For the past three days the scale of storms has been considerably larger than forecast. The GFS model consistently underestimates the scope and strength of storms.
This animation shows the rain the KMA model forecast for today, Fri. & Sat. and where, in 6 hr increments.
The final 29th April rain forecast tonight provides ultra long-range accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, GEFS (16-day) and KMA (12 day) models.
In the animation above you can see a flow of clouds from Sudan to Oman. This flow actually originates to the South West in the Central African Republic. Here you see the CAR to Khartoum leg of the journey.
Over the day this stream of moisture intensified powering storms in Oman, which then split into two streams, one heading north over Iran and one to the East to India.
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.
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.