Alastair Thompson Profile picture
May 1, 2021 27 tweets 11 min read Read on X
The transformation of #WestAfricanPlume's presentation overnight is extraordinary. It's line has moved 1000kms east. It's still running as hot as last night.

A rough estimate of the speed of the cloud movement last night put it an over 220 kms per hour.
To comprehend the scale of this thing a series of three animations follows.
Africa and Western Europe...
And a view including Eastern Europe, Russia, central Asia the Middle East and North Africa.
Since the arrival of #WestAfricaWaterPlume over night on Thursday, the weather map of Europe has completely changed, twice.

The weather that was there has been shunted aside, to the North, West and East.

The following 4 tweets show this visually.
Four images 28/4 to 1/5 at midday follow. In the first below at midday on Wednesday 28th April you see the beginnings of this 2nd major plume event in the bottom left.

Top right you see the aftermath of the last - significantly smaller - plume event which took place 17-19 April
Midday a day later this animation shows two plumes bottom right. The faster moving one is heading more northwards and this is now over Europe. The other one is headed towards the black sea.
By midday yesterday the plume is already having a massive impact on Europe and Russia where a large storm complex is being pushed northwards rapidly.

[See thread below for detail of what happened yesterday.]
This animation shows from 3pm-6pm last night.
9pm to midnight,
Today, 1st May a.k.a #MayDay 6am to 9am
And from 9am to 12pm.
this shows rain across Europe as per @meteoblue as at 12.35pm today. Will be interesting to see how this develops as more and more water is applied to the system.
There are weather warnings across all of Western Europe. meteoalarm.eu
I just checked with friends, its "pissing down" in Geneva and has been for a couple of days. The weather was supposed to be "glorious" as of a week ago.
Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get. So what come's next in this #ClimateChange #EuropeStorms weather event?

1. The driver of this is the #WestAfricaWaterPlume you can see below in the latest @ECMWF precipitable water 10 day forecast, and Its not over yet.
2. I ended up doing a second thread with a section looking forward about what is likely to happen in Europe over the coming week here:
Continuing today's series of three hourly animations of #WestAfricaWaterPlume here is today at 3pm. It contains some interesting features which are worth zooming in on.
It was not that obvious earlier, but if you look more closely it is clear there are multiple different layers to this weather - also that we have two distinct West African water plumes here, not one. They are on different trajectories and at different altitudes.
The satellite pictures are unclear because what is happening underneath is distinct and separate.

In this closeup you see the plumes as they leave Algeria, heading simultaneously to France & Spain on the left and Italy on the right.
The second huge surprise is that the plume on the right seems to be doing a U-Turn back towards #Africa. There is a possibility this may bring significant rain to #Egypt. Notably this was not in any of the forecasts - but nor was the the two plume complexity.
This is one of two views of what is happening in Northern Europe. At the bottom you see the #Cairo bound plume making its turn. Curling around from the right to top left you see the other plume also making a turn. But what is that in the top left heading NW?
Here's another, clearer view. Some of the weather at the bottom of the stack is making a break for the North Sea, trying to get out of the way.
A close up of what's going on in the North Sea. The breakaway Danish cloud is unlikely to go far as it is running into a strong, cold, northerly wind.
As the sun starts to set the picture has suddenly come a lot clearer as the two plumes have now very significantly diverged. It is also now obvious that the entire system has started to move East.
And that's all for tonight folks.

Thanks for watching those who have been. I think today is a historic day in European Meteorology. It may take a few days or years to understand mind. /ends

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More from @althecat

Dec 21
This video is about the work done by the “terrorist” who drove through the Magdeburg Christmas Market tonight at high speed killing injuring around 100 people.

How does a doctor practicing as a psychiatrist go from being a women’s rights defender focussed on Assisting Islamic women to escape an oppressive culture to being a multi murderer in his adopted country.

Meet @DrTalebJawad

A very unusual terrorist.
A good starting point for those interested in getting closer to the truth about what happened tonight is to visit @DrTalebJawad ‘s Twitter profile and look at his recent messages before the account gets locked.

It is immediately apparent that this is not your normal Islamic terrorist, in fact it quickly becomes apparent from his tweets that he was likely suffering from a psychotic break or something similar before he committed the horrific act of terrorism in Magdeburg.Image
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This incident took place in Magdeburg a city relatively near to where I am currently in Eastern Germany. It was fairly late evening. But the news exploded locally very quickly on Twitter.

And the initial speculation was of course that the terrorist was Islamic and that it was another planned terror attack.

At this point several hours later however it looks like the perpetrator was having an accrue psychological break.
Read 11 tweets
Dec 20
Follow ⁦@bartov_omer⁩ he is an Israeli Genocide Scholar and (my guess) a realist geopolitical analyst who will almost certainly be heard a lot in coming days and weeks. x.com/bartov_omer?s=…
…. In large part because his explanation of the true nature of the implementation of the current phase of the so-called “general’s plan” in Gaza and the criminality of @IsraeliPM Bibi Netanyahu is so clear and authoritative.
The war in Gaza is now over Bartov explains.

What is now happening, and what remains to be done on the a Israeli side is effectively the implementation of the full Zionist extremist (Ben Givir Smotrich and Netanyahu plan - I.e. removing Palestinians from Gaza altogether, an object that will be achieved through starving the remaining civilians and using other methods to make it impossible to continue to live there.

The strip is already being carved up into enclaves for this purpose. You could call them “Ghettos” (my word) corralling and keeping the Palestinian population separated whilst efforts to remake and settle the strip are completed.
Read 7 tweets
Dec 19
. @amanpour It’s not just the IDF that responds to press questions with rote answers that are clearly false.

The U.S. @StateDept has been doing exactly the same thing throughout the war for 14 months. Parroting the line “Israel has a right to defend itself” when everyone in the planet knows this is not true.

I know you must know this also. We all do.
I commend your report but I ask you and your network to please go further and actively oppose this war. And to call for it to end.

It is clear now in recent statements from Trump and Netanyahu that another war is intended in the Middle East by the U.S. and Israel. Its advocates will stood start lining up to beat the drums for this war.

Please @CNN, it is now time to end all of this.
The question we all have then is “When will the U.S. bring this evil to an end?”

A war with Iran 21 years after the horrific war in Iraq will have devastating consequences beyond imagining.

In its unwavering support for Netanyahu these past 14 months the U.S. is in the process now of destroying itself. Just as Israel is, or has done already.
Read 5 tweets
Dec 17
The first speaker in this star studded panel here is sober clear and damning.

“… featuring Mustafa Barghouti, Mads Gilbert, Ilan Pappe, and Ingrid Fiskaa – discusses and critically explores three key areas: the present moment where Gaza remains under constant genocidal attack from Israel; the so-called “legitimacy” of the rules-based order (including but not limited to international law) that’s supposed to prevent or stop such violence; and the future of rebuilding Gaza in a way that actually honours the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

The panel is moderated by Paul Salvatori, senior producer and presenter at TRT World.

Oslo Panel for Palestine youtu.be/nwCgY9auyuw?si… via @YouTube
As Christmas and the New Year approach, reflection, both self and outward looking are part of the zeitgeist for the faithful throughout the world.

As it stands this Christmas in Bethlehem will be the “second Christmas during an ongoing Genocide”. Placed in quote marks here because it seems hard to reconcile with reality.

How can this still be continuing?

How is it that the @Statedept even now - 15 months after October 7th and more recently the defeat of both Hezbollah and Assad - is still mostly saying “Israel has a right to defend itself. As massacres of 50-80 Gaza civilians - predominantly women and children - continue to occur on a daily basis.
Could there at least be a Christmas and New Years Truce? A brief silencing of the guns, a break from the endless massacre of innocents via fire-from-the-sky, as if Gaza were now Mordor.

It is certainly already nearly as desolate.

Someone needs to ask Bibi Netanyahu who is unusually and nearly singularly responsibility for all of this. WHEN AND HOW DOES THIS END?
Read 4 tweets
Dec 16
There is a new chapter on the story of Mosab Hassan Yousef.

This is the original production of this. But he will soon be known far better than he was when Chris Cuomo brought his story to life here back in December 2023 at the outset of the war, in the wake of January 7th.

Hamas Founder's Son Turned Israeli Spy - Mosab Hassan Yousef, "The Green... youtu.be/llJxz1pAlQQ?si… via @YouTube
“Hamas’s Aspiration is global”

“The Muslim Brotherhood is Here in the United States.”

For clarification Mosab Hassan is unquestionably completely genuine and in is views, and like me he is a pacifist when it comes to saving human life from conflict. And this as he articulates very very clearly remains his view.

And for this reason - notwithstanding the fact that this latest broadcast is extremely triggering, and will likely soon become very controversial, is also very important.Image
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The target of this messaging is Americans. Not me.

And probably not you, even though a large portion of my followers are in the U.S.
Read 19 tweets
Dec 11
Correction I meant to say here:

“The Neighbours & friends of Syria, and international solidarity movements, and all people of good consciousness need to develop a counter strategy to the ongoing U.S-Israel War Drumming - that is now clearly moving U.S. towards a 2003 repeat of the 2nd Gulf War.”

I would proscribe peaceful non-violence myself.
“The media's role in a democratic society in general is to provide the public with an informed basis upon which they can exercise their democratic rights to lobby, and express their views on what should happen to their elected representatives. And nothing changes during wartime.
When measured by this standard I would conclude that the media both here in New Zealand and everywhere else in the Western World – with the exception of the Internet – has failed spectacularly to do its job.”

- Tuesday, 29 April 2003, 3:00 pm
Read 10 tweets

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