I was wondering if this might happen. With all the moisture streaming along the North African coast and north east from central Africa. Also some forecasts had this indicated as a possibility.
Admittedly the rain is very light. But it is June and close to Solstice, the hottest month in this part of the world. Here we see the broader picture. The #EuropeBigWet is continuing in a fairly stable pattern for another 48 hours still.
Here's a close up of the North Western quadrant with some big storms bursting to life near the Morocco/Algeria border.
Another view of this area showing the rainfall associated with these clouds.
Morocco is supposed to be dry this time of year. In fact they have had a fair bit of rain there continuously since March. [Ref. tripsavvy.com/morocco-weathe…]
To the south east we have the engine room of the West African Monsoon over and inland from Nigeria. Today there are two big storms over Niger and Chad. Both are generating sufficient height to inject moisture into the north easterly jets at around 10,000m alt.
This map shows 300 hpa winds which are as you see heading north east from where those two storms are. This pattern has been place for some time now bringing clouds across Egypt. And this is contributing to the rain over Lebanon this evening.
Here are today's 10-day rainfall forecasts for the broader region three of the four models continue to show a fair bit of #DesertRain.
And here are 48 hour forecasts (rainfall today and tomorrow) from the same four models. Unfortunately its impossible to know which one is getting it right.
Rainfall was light in the #HornofAfrica. #ArabianStorms were also subdued, though there was another storm south of Mecca as the evening approached, the third day running rain has been close to the holy city during a month where the average rainfall is zero.
Introducing the #MiddleEast segment here's a wind map from this morning. 850hpa is typically about 1500m but probably higher given the heat at the moment. This is the wind that is driving a massive dust river south from Iraq over Kuwait and into Yemen.
You have to look close to see it and its clearer as the sun sets - but this dust river is huge. Interestingly it is also connected to the Central Africa monsoon jet which is bringing the cloud onshore into Lebanon. From there it curls east and then south east picking up the dust.
10-Day June 12th, accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC & KMA weather models.
And finally, June 12th 16-day (GFS) and 12-day (KMA) accumulated rainfall forecasts for the Middle East.
The GFS is again showing rains over the Arabian Sea getting very close to Yemen. This 16 day forecast also shows very heavy rains in #Ethopia in bottom left.
And this is relevant to the question of when the #HornOfAfrica Big Rains will begin. On June 8th I addressed this (thread below) in the daily forecasts.
Here's an interim update. We are expecting the Indian Monsoon to be spreading west into Pakistan and into the Arabian Sea. Here are four satellite images each taken at the same time from the 9th 10th 11th and 12th of June.
And this is indeed happening.
Finally. Make sure to check out @Arab_Storms for the latest storm videos, from Oman, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A small selection follows. Beginning with this video of a thunderstorm downburst, which can generate very strong winds.
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.
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.
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.