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

Sep 10
At this point following the Qatar obscenity Israel is now breaking the internet and the world.

something decisive is needed to break Israel - a peaceful action that will work and show the world that justice still exists and that peace is possible.
A wise friend proposed a brilliant idea. Every nation on earth which is willing and able should send a frigate to the Mediterranean Sea and take a message to Israel that it cannot ignore.
The foundations of the United Nations itself are now crumbling under the weight of the Gaza Obscenity and nations like Britain that seem to have been turned are facing protest and resistance of epic proportions from their citizens.

The center cannot hold.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 4
I’ll be posting videos and news here on Twitter from the flotilla which is about to depart from Majorca for Tunis on the first leg of the journey to Gaza.
More boats are expected to join the flotilla from Europe and North Africa along the way as it moves west across the Mediterranean. @GretaThunberg is making the voyage again and Israel will not be able to contain or stop this flotilla most likely. And definitely not the publicity.
This first video is of a wind squall hitting one of the boats as it departs Barcelona.
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Aug 10
Netanyahu has proposed a pathway to end the war in Gaza under pressure primarily from the U.S. UK, France & Germany. Spain and Ireland and several other European nations & the European Commission.

LIVE: PM Netanyahu Holds a Press conference youtube.com/live/1ebXvF9MO…
The @israelipm sounds defeated. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end. The deal being offered to Gaza is far from perfect but it sounds workable in Netanyahus outline.
@IsraeliPM Whether it will be approved by Hamas however is unclear and rather complicated - as it’s unclear who inside Gaza would be in a position to respond to the offer. Many of Hamas’s fighters may prefer to die as martyrs also than to agree to any deal.
Read 5 tweets
Jul 25
Guess who has the most to lose if/when @realDonaldTrump discovers he’s now a lame duck President.

He is now so deep under water both in polling and with his base that it’s very hard to imagine him bouncing back.
I’ll answer my question shortly buts it’s well worth pondering…. In the meantime consider this.

Trump is now a laughing stock. And not only is everyone in America now laughing at him. But he has also been abandoned by his base and his party.
The bonfire of vanity that belongs to Donald Trump is iridescent, a signal to the world that his presidency has ended before it even started.
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Jul 25
This is pathetic from @realDonaldTrump he’s lashing out like an angry teenager. Jerome Powell says he’s included a the costs of a building that was completed years ago in his very public attack on the FED Chair.
Trump has completely lost the plot. The single most damaging thing that he could do to undermine confidence in the U.S. dollar (which he publicly claims to want to deflate and there by make all Americans poorer - is to attack the Federal Reserve and the SEC.
@realDonaldTrump Trump is setting fire to the dollar to distract from his Epstein mess what a complete baby.
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Jul 2
I attended the Bonn climate talks. They were very disappointing to everyone. The elephant in the room was (of course) the U.S. decision to withdraw from the talks altogether.

open.spotify.com/episode/3YV0SU…
Unfortunately.. perhaps intentionally in advance of the continuation of climate talks regardless of #US_Disintigration the talks were also very sparsely attended particularly by activists and NGOs. The reason for this was @elonmusk destroying @-USAID.
@elonmusk As you can see the USAID Twitter account is now dead - deleted which is an appalling act of vandalism executed by Elon and his tech-bro team of teenagers.
Read 13 tweets

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