Alastair Thompson Profile picture
May 2, 2021 19 tweets 9 min read Read on X
The interconnections between global weather systems is becoming a trend of a fascinating voyage of metereological discovery that started in The #WestSahara in March, moved focus to #Ethiopia and #ArabianStorms in April and has now widened to include Europe and India.
Around lunch I did a wrap up thread about #EuropeanStorms activity caused by Round 1 of the #WestAfricaWaterPlume.
And to see what happened in Round 1 yesterday, this thread is the best place to start.
The events in Europe yesterday resulted in a fairly large #ArabianStorms event in the #MiddleEast this afternoon which was not forecast.

It started midway between a line of storms across Iran and a strengthening rain laden stream crossing Yemen.
Here's a closeup of the storm's early formation. Which to me looks delightfully whimsical.
Four hours later the #ArabianStorm complex covered an area around the size of Italy. In the top left of the image you can see what most likely helped it to grow so fast. Incoming moisture coming in hot from the north.
Here is another view of this, the storm Gulf storm is bottom right. The moisture is part of the right hand plume identified in yesterday's thread - which spun north towards southern Germany whilst making a sharp turn southwards - initially making landfall in Egypt.
Here's a view of this rapidly turning easterly arm of the #WestAfricaWaterPlume from last night.

Since then the #WestAfricaPlumeEvent has evolved considerably,
Here we see the picture from mid afternoon today. The #WestAfricanWaterPlume has become a multitude - with the strongest river in the far west. Many of the plumes are only becoming visible once they get close to the Mediterranean.
This animation shows the plumes in greater detail.
The plumes seem to operate in bursts, and the significant ones are those at the far right. This picture shows the scene as of 30 minutes ago.

The main feature is the big area of clear air in a roughly square box from the Adriatic Coast to Greece heading North East.
Compare the position of the storm in the attached tweet - the one over France [] from 24 hours ago, with where it is now. About to be pushed across the Baltic into #Sweden.

That storm is doing a consistent 100kmph. As is the main body of the plume.
The next three animations follow the progress of the main plume bulldozer, which is proceeding almost precisely as forecast for today.

Here we see 9am to 12pm.
This animation picks up from 12pm and takes us through to 3pm.
And this one to 5.15pm.
The leading edge of what I am calling the Polish Storm is now over the Baltic. And as its development and position was well forecast we can perhaps see where it is going...

This forecast has the storm near Moscow tomorrow night & an Atlantic storm in the UK at the same time.
This images are the CMC (left) and ECMWF (right) precipitable water forecasts for 6pm tonight. They are both very good.
And here are the two forecasts for 6pm tomorrow. Unfortunately the low systems being produced by these bursts of African water are fairly consistently bringing cold Arctic air South.
We shall see what happens tomorrow I guess :)

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More from @althecat

Jul 21
THREAD: Some thoughts on October 7th and the importance of their being global transparency over what we know about what really happened on that terrible day.

1/ This (see screenshots in the first few posts in this thread) is one of the most important pieces of conflict related journalism published in recent years.

It relates to the orders given to soldiers on October 7th to fire on any vehicle seeking to return to the Gaza Strip to prevent the taking of hostages and was published on July 7th, 10 months later in Haaretz.Image
2/ As @IsraeliPM Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to address congress it is vital that the public in the US, Israel and globally is fully aware of what exactly happened on October 7th in Gaza. Image
3/ The account in this story published by Haaretz is at this time still behind a paywall and it has therefore not been read by the very large number of people who ought to have done so. I have not seen very many reports containing the detail of this report elsewhere though I presume there are many.

A copy of the report can be found however on here >> Archive.is
archive.md/zqUntImage
Read 16 tweets
Jul 8
OK so clearly #HurricaneBeryl is not the same as #HurricaneHarvey. But there are some striking similarities in terms of what has made it so much more persistent than either forecast or as modeled.

This thread is going to look at this issue a bit more deeply.
- The overall cloud mass of the #HurricaneBeryl thunderstorm complex proved much more resilient than expected once it came over land. Why?
- Also Like #Harvey Beryl did slow down after making landfall and continued to spin over land. Why?
- I think the answer to both questions relates to the very warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Like Harvey back in 2017, Beryl has been fueled by a constant stream of warm wet atmospheric flows of energy off of the Gulf of Mexico.
- This is obvious in part simply from observing the astonishing expansion of the cloud field after #Beryl made landfall early this morning.

A clue to understanding this can be found in looking at the the astonishing growth progression of #HurricaneBeryl's cloud field over landafter Beryl strengthened and formed itself into a Hurricane in the period after making landfall south of Houston.

Over the course of the rest of the morning you can see in these images how much the wind field expanded.
Like Harvey #Beryl also grew and strengthened itself by feeding off of the gulf of mexico, specifically the area between the Texas coastline and what looks like the outer boundary of the convection field which expanded extremely strongly to the north.

The only source for all this additional atmospheric moisture can be the oceanic convection which took place in what is a fairly clearly bounded 136,000 km2 area of ocean which as you can see in this animation is very closely bound to the rest of the circulation.

This is a much much larger area than the area of active rainfall which settled over the city and metropolis of Houston for the morning and which is finally starting to move off to the north now.
This version of the graphic shows the comparative sizes of the area of water which is responsible for the astonitising growth of post landfall #HurricaneBeryl - and the area of the storm that remained over the ocean and which is almost certainly responsible for both why this storm was so persistent and why it (like Harvey) slowed down after coming ashore.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 8
#HurricaneBerylis not expected to give up lightly as it moves onshore and turns north eastward over Texas and then heads north east across the great planes towards the great lakes.

Typically we expect hurricanes to weaken rapidly over land - especially wind wise. But #Berylis not forecast to behave as normal - probably because like Harvey, its tail over the Gulf is keeping it fueled. - the currently forecast pattern from Fox News's exclusive model shown in these images was present in some of the simulations of Beryl after it crossed the Yucutan a couple of days ago.

To my mind questions ought to be asked about the accuracy of the forecasting for this storm, as - like the last super destructive Texas Hurricane, Harvey in 2017 [] Beryl is proving to be a LOT more destructive in its impacts than initially forecast.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane…Image
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The final image in this sequence of screenshots of Fox Weather Graphics is worth drawing attention to as it shows how much broader the impacts of this hurricane are expected to be as it moves across the great planes roughly speaking heading up the Mississippi river, and continuing to dump potential flooding rain as it goes.Image
This image shows the forecast expected severe weather threat from the remnants of #HurricaneBeryl in Arkansas and Missouri up as far as Saint Louis. Image
Read 6 tweets
Jul 8
ALERT: High Target News Environment in play - numerous consequential news events with global implications.

1. British elections - (Thursday July 4th-Friday July 5th): Delivering an unprecedented landslide win to the left's @UKLabour Party + strong showings for the Liberals and Greens . The UK Chancellor @RachelReevesMP will shortly set out her economic policy in a speech.

2. French elections (Sunday July 7th) deliver a remarkable 2nd big win for the left in politics in France - dashing the hopes of Marine le Pen's hard right wing "Rassemblement National" of first parliamentary victory

3. Overnight (7th-8th July): an unprecedented huge Hurricane , #Hurricane Beryl - makes landfall in Houston as a Category 1 Hurricane, its main threat to the epicenter of the global fossil fuel industry will be flooding. It is still night in Houston at present.
You can watch the new UK Chancellor's speech live here now >> youtube.com/live/oJUvTVdTM…
English language coverage of the French Election from @France24_en can be watched here >>
Read 5 tweets
Jul 1
Hmmmmmm…. Why is the audio of the @youtube version of the UNSG office daily briefing for 1st July missing sound from 5:24 to 6:07?

Afghanistan, Lebanon, Myanmar & other topics - Daily Press Briefing (1 J... via @YouTube

Image
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The content of this portion is available as it is simply a quote from written remarks of UNSG @antonioguterres made to a meeting in Austria. But the missing YouTube audio is unprecedented in my experience and hard to explain.
Video from the un platform is here. webtv.un.org/en/asset/k12/k…
Read 10 tweets
Jun 23
Another day. Another Israeli
war crime.

Intense bombing by Israeli forces on Gaza continues and kills at least 3... via @YouTube
This report also addresses the widening rift between Israeli PM Netanyahu and the U.S. Government. True to form Netanyahu is showing no sign of backing down. But this tweet showing former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant leaving on a U.S. flight for the U.S. speaks volumes in this very intense moment.

Amidst continued bombing of Rafah, Israeli forces are resuming strikes i... via @YouTube
And here from two days ago more Margaret Brennan context on the rupture in relations between the @WhiteHouse and @IsraeliPM

Israel has not come close to destroying Hamas, U.S. official says via @YouTube
Read 7 tweets

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