Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Jun 1, 2021 27 tweets 25 min read Read on X
Well its hard to know where to begin with today's #MiddleEast and #HornOfAfrica rainfall forecasts.

The action is now further north, and west. Here we see the consequences of the first phase of what appears to be becoming a continuous #WesternSaharaPlume.
An bit of a battle us underway between a high pressure system over Northern Erope and the plume which is entering at the bottom left in this image of Jetstream level 250Hpa 11km high winds.
While the model forecasts remain optimistic that an orderly jetstream may eventually appear, so far this has not happened. And in the meantime these winds are picking up moisture in the tropics and taking it in large quantities to places where its not expected.
Same animation time scale but this time of precipitable water. This is showing little sign of of becoming less unruly within the forecast time frame. And as water has significantly more mass/inertia than air, this could explain differences between forecast and observed weather.
One thing is going according to the script however. Today is the first day of the Indian subcontinent monsoon season and the forecasts show significant rainfall across all of India over the next 12 days.
The Atlantic Hurricane season officially begins today too and we have our first long range model prognostication. A storm in one of the favoured spots for formation, off the coast of Nicaragua, heading north.
At this range though this is hugely speculative.
Back to the #NorthAfrica #ME & #HOA rainfall forecasts.

Here's what the picture looked like last night.
In the east storms once again over the Red sea and around Medina. And in the west the #WesternSaharaPlume strengthening.
This morning the #WesternSaharaPlume is running hot bringing rain across Algeria, Spain & the Med. Rain is now forecast for where I am in Western France tonight and it looks like the rest of Western Europe will return to unseasonably wet conditions soon after.
Here are two more weather observations from this morning via @Meteoblue, the animations as always are from @zoom_earth
Here's a close up of the plume. The Eastern visible edge is moving at 100kph. On the western side clouds and storms are moving into France at 20-30kph.
This GEFS ensemble 15 day animation models what is expected to follow. And this means a lot more rain. France's rivers are already running fairly high as are those in the east.
The result is water water everywhere. Albeit of the kind you can drink.

Again this is a 16 day forecast from the GEFS ensemble model.
Meanwhile in Eastern Africa the #EastAfricaPlume which has resulted in rain in northern #Sudan #Egypt and #SaudiArabia has stopped but a new one may well be developing over Chad. You need to look closely as the cloud signals are fairly minor at the moment.
Wile the monsoon itself is marching westwards. Higher altitude winds - those that appear to be carrying these water streams - produced by the storm activity in Chad - are moving east, and turn north over #Sudan. Admittedly this is just a guess as to what is going on.
And finally the long range rainfall forecasts.....

Here are today's June 1st North Africa accumulated forecasts, in descending order of #DesertRain intensity. The CMC forecast is now consistently showing 1mm of rain on average per day over a large portion of the Western Sahara.
A view of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa from this morning from @NASA's Modis satellite.
Here are today's #HoA rainfall forecasts.

1 June 10-day rain (+ 12 day KMA) forecasts for the #HornOfAfrica. The intensity of rain in the 12 day KMA forecast looks like what the Blue Nile historically delivers.

#Sudan #SouthSudan #Ethiopia #Somalia #Somaliland #GERD
And 3-Day rain forecasts to midnight Friday.

#Sudan #SouthSudan #Ethiopia #Somalia #Somaliland #GERD
Here's an animation of last night's storms over the Red Sea, near Makkah and around Medina.
And this afternoon it appears there will be #ArabianStorms for at least one more day in this series in North East Saudi Arabia.
June 1st, 10 day accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, ECMWF, CMC & KMA weather models.

@Arab_Storms
#ArabianStorms

#KSA #Yemen #Oman #Jordan #UAE #Iraq #Iran #Syria #GERD #Sudan #Egypt #DesertRain

الله أعلم
And 3 day forecasts from the same models to midnight Friday. From what we can see this afternoon only the CMC and KMA are within scope.

@Arab_Storms
#ArabianStorms

#KSA #Yemen #Oman #Sudan #Iran #Sudan #DesertRain #Makkah

الله أعلم
A selection of storm videos from around the world follow. The first from New Zealand, my home, where a freakish tropical moisture driven storm came close to causing significantly more catastrophic damage than what you see here.
Forgot to mention these are all from @Arab_Storms!

Here's an video from Spain early this morning, showing the #WesternSaharaPlume's impact in Basque Country, in the west of the Pyrenees mountains.
And our final regular accumulated rainfall forecasts for today, ultra long-range forecasts from the GFS & its ensemble counterpart GEFS (16 Day) and the KMA (12 Day) models.
/ENDS

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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

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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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