Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Jun 2, 2021 20 tweets 11 min read Read on X
Rains in Ethiopia and adjacent East African parts of the the Nile watersheds have been pumping today. Also across Somalia and Somali land, Sudan, South Sudan and south into areas west of Uganda feeding into Lake Victoria.

Today's rainfall forecasts follow with commentary.
The image above from @NASA Modis shows the upper Nile Basin and areas to the west this morning.

This animation below shows the same area this evening. Storms are once again dancing off the coast of Jeddah, rain surrounds Medina and clouds are gathering over Chad and Sudan.
Here's a close up of the cloud formation over Chad and Sudan today. If you look closely you can see two layers moving in different directions. Some clouds aligning with the westward motion of the monsoon and others, lighter in colour moving north east.
This is the first time this year we have seen cloud over this area so far north into both Eastern Sudan and Chad.

These are areas which are in the heart of the deep Sahara desert. Pictures
1. Chad & Libya.
2. Sudan
3. A map showing the scale of this.
This video, released today by UNSG @antonioguterres - addressing the role of Oceans in balancing weather & and talking about our need to help them do so- is an excellent introduction to the next series of animations.
The UNSG didn't mention the Atlantic but he could have, as it is the main driver of all the unusual weather phenomena we are seeing in the North Western Hemisphere.

The three weather systems bumping into each other over Ireland illustrate this nicely.
Again, this probably wasn't on @antonioguterres's mind during his announcement, but it could have been. This GFS animation shows massive four water vapour pipelines pumping moisture into Europe over the next seven days, two of which we can see in the animation above.
This animation shows the Eastern side of the Atlantic this morning. Top left a large wet north Atlantic cloud mass is pushing in from the west.

Bottom left a #WesternSaharaPlume sourced fromthe Atlantic is crossing Algeria & disrupting weather around the Black Sea, upper right.
Here's a closer view of the collision this afternoon. The storm front advancing up the Moroccan coastline is splitting in two as it is colliding with a high pressure system heading south. Half is going east along the med. Half north west over Ireland.
This close up shows the eastern arm of the Atlantic plume coming up the Western Sahara Coast. The western arm is also there but not visible as its not condensing and forming into cloud.
Here's view of this from the satellites who can see the invisible water vapour. This is a forecast but only six hours into the latest run it is as good as a weather observation.
And here is a view of Europe in a week's time, after the subcontinent has been fully filled with moisture.
In case you are wondering. This is not what is expected in June in Europe.
I cannot say with confidence that this has never happened before, but I seriously doubt it. And it may not.... this is only a forecast. But over seven days these things are now pretty reliable.
So here are today's 10-day North Africa rainfall forecasts.
Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
The Middle East....
Europe...
India....
Eurasia...
Apologies for the late delivery of these forecasts today and the abbreviated format. Internet connectivity issues.

/ENDS

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More from @althecat

Jan 12
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.

Understand The Economy via @YouTubeyoutube.com/playlist?list=…
Read 7 tweets
Jan 9
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.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 8
Comedians vs Trump and Elon /1

Trump Ratchets Up Call to Annex Canada & Greenland as Trudeau Says He'll... via @YouTube
Comedians vs Trump & Elon /2
Zuck, Meta fact checking, McDonald’s, and Amazon Cozy Up To Trump, Dropping Fact-Checkers & their integrity. via @YouTube
@YouTube Comedians vs Trump & Elon /3

SETH Meyers - Trump's Insane Press Conference About Greenland, Jack Smith, Gulf of Mex... via @YouTube
Read 6 tweets
Jan 5
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.

dalek.zone/w/xjUjomMZxRCv…
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.
Read 8 tweets
Jan 2
So @elonmusk has definitely opened the doors it seems to Pandora’s box.
He may have jumped the gun a little. But he has his reasons.

Germany & Magdeburg.

But the fuse was arguably lit when the CIA and FBI Commandeered Jack Dorsey’s Twitter for its own purposes.

I don’t think we are going back.

This is the new normal.
Welcome to the era of Trump.

This is what happens when you have a VERY Messy transition of power in the Global Hegemony.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 21, 2024
This video is about the work done by the “terrorist” who drove through the Magdeburg Christmas Market tonight at high speed killing injuring around 100 people.

How does a doctor practicing as a psychiatrist go from being a women’s rights defender focussed on Assisting Islamic women to escape an oppressive culture to being a multi murderer in his adopted country.

Meet @DrTalebJawad

A very unusual terrorist.
A good starting point for those interested in getting closer to the truth about what happened tonight is to visit @DrTalebJawad ‘s Twitter profile and look at his recent messages before the account gets locked.

It is immediately apparent that this is not your normal Islamic terrorist, in fact it quickly becomes apparent from his tweets that he was likely suffering from a psychotic break or something similar before he committed the horrific act of terrorism in Magdeburg.Image
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This incident took place in Magdeburg a city relatively near to where I am currently in Eastern Germany. It was fairly late evening. But the news exploded locally very quickly on Twitter.

And the initial speculation was of course that the terrorist was Islamic and that it was another planned terror attack.

At this point several hours later however it looks like the perpetrator was having an accrue psychological break.
Read 11 tweets

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