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.
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.
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.
If @realDonaldTrump chooses to join Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign if he is not obeyed …. he WILL find himself indicted in the international criminal court in The Hague.
And he will then have to make a decision on whether he is willing to remain in the U.S.
@realDonaldTrump Should he proceed as he has intimated that he should now be pursued by protestors everywhere he goes.
There is a lot of concern about evacuations of civilians from Gaza in the flotilla as anyone leaving may not be able to return any time soon. /2
But the moral hazard here is palpable. There are thousands of injured and starving mostly women and children. And we saw the young babies dying in the hospitals in the early stages of this war. /3
More and more naval vessels from Europe and the Middle East are being deployed to protect the Global Samir Flotilla as it moves slowly but surely towards Gaza where it intends to deliver aid and global attention. /1
Attacks from drones on the flotilla have resumed and Israel is presumably responsible for this. It is because of this that naval vessels from Europe are now joining the flotilla to protect their citizens rights of travel in international waters. /2
The escalation appears fairly slow at present and the flotilla is still within Greek waters at present /3
The #Samud #GazaFlotilla is currently sailing across the Ionian Sea towards the island archipelago south east of Athens in the Western Mediterranean. Conditions appear good for this leg that departed from Sicily after leaving Tunisia. The Flotilla set off from Barcelona.
2/ this current leg is 860 kms roughly and lead boats in the 51 vessel flotilla are currently approaching south western Greece. You can follow the flotillas progress here >> flotilla-orpin.vercel.app
3/ After two drone attacks on flotilla boats in Tunisia the flotilla sailed first to Sicily where it was joined by several more boats. And this map shows the path of the flotilla so far. The numbers in the dots indicate more vessels joining #GazaFlotilla