The two computer models which are known for their prowess in predicting cyclones continue to forecast cyclone formation in the Arabian Sea in coming days.
The question of whether these cyclones will form hangs over today's #MiddleEast and #HornOfAfrica rainfall forecasts.
This image shows the Arabian Sea area where the GFS and ECMWF models are both expecting cyclone formation within the next 10 days, at different times and in different places.
Here's the GFS 9th May model forecast for today showing formation starting on Friday and landfall five days later.
The ECMWF has formation a day later next Saturday, off the coast of Kerela India and landfall imminent on Wednesday 19th.
Neither the CMC or KMA models show formation at all in their latest runs. NOTE: Cyclone formation is a complicated process and may not happen at all.
But cyclone or no cyclone the, the combination of intense thunderstorm activity in the Arabian Sea and on-shore winds may well result in increased rainfall over coming days as shown in these 10-day forecasts for North Africa from GFS, CMC (10 day) and KMA (12 day) models.
Here are today's rainfall forecasts:
First up, May 9th, 10-day accumulated rain forecasts, for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa from the @ECMWF, GFS and KMA weather models.
+ Here are 3-day accumulated rain forecasts, to Midnight Wednesday, for #Ethiopia and the #HornOfAfrica, again from the @ECMWF, GFS and KMA weather models.
The rain pattern has changed with more of a rain focus in the West Ethiopian Highlands - the #GERD#Abay watershed.
It's been a quiet day for #ArabianStorms today with only modest thunderstorms along the Red Sea cost of #SaudiArabia. The strong winds across the Eastern Arabian Peninsula from the #HornOfAfrica to #Oman have finally died down.
Pictures: Caspian Sea, Aral Sea and Arabian Gulf.
While the rains gave stopped the video imagery keeps coming from @Arab_Storms, here an amazing video of Oman Mountain waterfalls.
Here are today's, May 9th, 10 day accumulated rain forecasts, for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, ECMWF (both showing a Cyclone), CMC & KMA weather models.
And the final rainfall forecasts for tonight for the #MiddleEast are ultra-long range computer model forecasts, these provide a view of what a cyclone may bring >> The last 3 GFS (16 Day) model runs + the (12-Day) KMA model (no Cyclone).
الله أعلم
And finally, a reminder that no cyclone has yet formed. If one does official warnings and information will be provided by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center from the U.S. Navy here >> metoc.navy.mil/jtwc/jtwc.html
Ok so this is a bit weird, but in a kinda chill way so do bare with me and and I will be happy to answer questions afterwards. It’s about a castle on a virtual island in a massive online role playing game called Evony and it involves a possible but speculative discussion about @elonmusk and @X.
All will be revealed but first a picture or four actually from the game. More will come.
Ok. So here’s what I think is going on in a nutshell. I think elonmusk has invested in a MMORPG: a “Massive Multimedia Online Role Playing Game” which is a bit of a mouthful, called EVONY.
I liked its Twitter ads and finally clicked. It’s huge. Someone else can do the business story here which I am sure is interesting too.
But the this bit is weird.
The mysterious knight on the red horse arrived this morning beside my castle and he had some treasure.
I hadn’t a clue who it was so I grabbed the treasure and tried to kill the horse and rider as that’s what you do. But we got smashed badly.
This interview with working class Uk financial markets savant Gary Stevenson - who has just published an autobiography - is seriously terrifying. He now has a @YouTube channel it seems and I’ll post a link shortly.
James O'Brien meets Gary Stevenson | LBC via @YouTube
His prognosis for the collapse of social democratic nation state finances due to the very sharp rise in income distribution inequality in the UK is horrific.
The consequences of unfettered transfers of money over decades due to neoliberal economics initially and more recently quantitative easing driven transfers of wealth from the middle class to the top 5% of the population is the cause of his concern.
It’s very hard to imagine what can be done politically to rebalance this.
Thomas Piketty’s thesis which among other things warned about all of this based on long term historical analysis of wealth inequality appears to be colliding with Western Civilisation in a manner that threatens the very foundations of that civilisation.
Gary’s YouTube channel which addresses all this is here.
Well this was actually pretty good… very little crazy right wing stuff - none in fact - some light criticism of wokeness and a consensus that Hitler was a socialist or communist dictator not a rightwing liberal fascist - mercifully no discussion of Greenland Panama or Canada
The bit at the end was actually quite nice and agreement about ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Importantly and probably deliberately there was very little to zero overt electioneering - a little bit of criticism of Weidel’s Spitzencandidat competition from Weidle but nothing extreme.
So nothing imo that could be seen as being election interference IMO - nor any reason for the DSA to be concerned or to get involved.
I didn’t even hear any particularly overt endorsement that went beyond that you might hear in passing in a podcast interview.
It ended with a discussion of mars - Elon’s favourite subject of conversation - which was quite interesting including a reference to the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy series and Douglas Adams.
From Weidel’s point of view though there was a lot of positive moderate exposure of her party and probably around 200k + listeners. Which may give her a bounce in the polls.
Also the final segment talking about space was quite delightful and genuine and portrayed the AFD Leader in a positive light.
And I’d say the two of them have both found a new friend.
This is an update thread on this OCCRP story on @StateDept and @USAID funding for several large investigative journalism projects which has had a lot of downstream impacts it seems. Especially in Europe,
The underlying original story about govt funding for investigative journalism projects was initially flagged by @ryangrim.
This organisation - OCCRP that not many people seemed to have been aware of - was responsible for a series of outstanding investigative journalism consortia projects including the Panama papers.
This is a leaked rough cut of the NDR (German public broadcaster north west Germany) investigation into what happened With the OCCRP story.
It was never officially published but was recently leaked publicly by Wikileaks.
With the benefit of hindsight arguably Wikileaks ought to be the international organisation that coordinates these large investigative consortia, though it’s not clear that they want to do so.
What is clear from the fallout from all of this is that the system that was in place for running these consortia is no longer fit for purpose.