It is now two weeks till the first open democratic #Ethiopian election.
To open here's a high resolution satellite image of the Nile Basin from Cairo to Lake Victoria including Eastern Ethiopia where the #GERD dam is located, and where the Blue Nile - source of much of the Nile's flow - originates in Lake Tana (the heart shaped lake).
We will zoom in on the #HornOfAfrica starting with the wider picture. On the left side of this image you can see a #WesternSahara water transport event which is significantly impacting weather conditions in Europe. (See more in the attached thread
This zoomed section shows the water transit event and its impact in terms of rainfall over Italy the Adriatic coast, Greece and the Aegean Sea.
Our first rainfall forecasts. 10 day forecasts from the CMC, KMA, GFS and ECMWF models. There is an increasingly large level of disagreement between the two most extreme models CMC and ECMWF.
Note the CMC forecast of lots of #DesertRain north of the 15o Nth. latitude line.
We move east to the #HornOfAfrica. There are now strong westerlies blowing in from the North West over Oman these are setting of convection over the mountains from Yemen up the Red Sea Coast, in Taif #KSA, and Oman.
Note the fourth forecast is a 12 day KMA forecast. There is again a wide range of opinion between the three models.
This animation is a close up from earlier in the day today. The impact of the north easterly winds is significant.
Here are 3-day #HornOfAfrica rainfall forecasts from the same three models.
I have paused rainfall forecasts for now for the Arabian Peninsula for the past few days in deference to this announcement from the Saudi Arabian Govt.
However I also note that this report indicates that this ban comes into effect in six months time.
It is worth noting that none of the models whose forecasts I have been regularly posting since April have been doing a particularly good job at actually predicting rainfall in the peninsula of late anyway.
Here is an animation of today's cloud activity on the Peninsula.
To conclude today a wrap up of amazing videos of storm activity from around the world from @Arab_Storms.
Netanyahu has proposed a pathway to end the war in Gaza under pressure primarily from the U.S. UK, France & Germany. Spain and Ireland and several other European nations & the European Commission.
The @israelipm sounds defeated. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end. The deal being offered to Gaza is far from perfect but it sounds workable in Netanyahus outline.
@IsraeliPM Whether it will be approved by Hamas however is unclear and rather complicated - as it’s unclear who inside Gaza would be in a position to respond to the offer. Many of Hamas’s fighters may prefer to die as martyrs also than to agree to any deal.
This is pathetic from @realDonaldTrump he’s lashing out like an angry teenager. Jerome Powell says he’s included a the costs of a building that was completed years ago in his very public attack on the FED Chair.
Trump has completely lost the plot. The single most damaging thing that he could do to undermine confidence in the U.S. dollar (which he publicly claims to want to deflate and there by make all Americans poorer - is to attack the Federal Reserve and the SEC.
@realDonaldTrump Trump is setting fire to the dollar to distract from his Epstein mess what a complete baby.
I attended the Bonn climate talks. They were very disappointing to everyone. The elephant in the room was (of course) the U.S. decision to withdraw from the talks altogether.
Unfortunately.. perhaps intentionally in advance of the continuation of climate talks regardless of #US_Disintigration the talks were also very sparsely attended particularly by activists and NGOs. The reason for this was @elonmusk destroying @-USAID.
@elonmusk As you can see the USAID Twitter account is now dead - deleted which is an appalling act of vandalism executed by Elon and his tech-bro team of teenagers.
This article is deeply depressing. For my part at Scoop.co.nz it is clear to me that:
1. The Govt has a deliberate strategy - probably not official but nevertheless operative to destroy NZ media. 2. This is not going to change any time soon. thespinoff.co.nz/politics/02-07…
& Sadly from what I discerned last year the @nzlabour opposition is both apathetic and indifferent to the plight of media. Also the @NZGreens. And have always been so for as long as I can remember.
This is extremely disappointing
@nzlabour @NZGreens I will be returning to NZ in August to ensure continues to function in these very difficult times for NZ media. We have faced numerous big challenges recently and thank our supporters and readers for their support.Scoop.co.nz
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.