Thread by @althecat

Cyclone #Yaas has turned very quickly into a massive powerful storm which is currently forecast to reach "Very Severe Cyclone" strength (on the threshold between Cat 1 and Cat 2 Hurricane strength) overnight tomorrow before making landfall.

Here you see a near live @zoom_earth animation of #CycloneYaas and outer rainbands already over the North Western shows of the Bay of Bengal.

Here is a @NASA Modis satellite image taken this morning of #Yaas, it looks like it is fairly rapidly organising itself.

Here's a GFS accumulated rainfall forecast for #CycloneYaas through to Saturday. The rain tends to fall mostly on the North Eastern side of these storms and will bring significant rainfall and high winds across all of Bangladesh and around Calcutta.

As the storm is expected to bring a large number of small low pressure centers together over the region rainfalls over a 10 day period and beyond are massive. Here are GFS forecasts for 10-day and 16-Day accumulated rainfall totals.

#YaasCyclone is certainly going to herald the beginning of the Indian Monsoon season on June 1st in a spectacular manner.

Here are the other major models views on rainfall the first three are 1-day forecasts, the last one is 12 days.

Finally. This global precipitable water simulation through to June 1st shows some interesting context about the intensity of the rainfall potential in the West Pacific and Indian Ocean tropical areas at the moment.

Its almost as if there is a water vapour traffic jam underway.