Over 24hrs 25-60mms rain has fallen over all three Nile tributaries with the heaviest falling over the #Abbay in Ethiopia's highlands which feeds the #GERD. Here we see an image of storms starting up this morning.
I jumped the gun calling the beginning of #GERD filling on1 July - as the big rainy season began.
Official news of filling came yesterday in the form of an objection to the filling from Egypt after being notified by #Ethiopia that it is underway.
#GERD filling is expected to be less than 13.5 Billion Cubic Meters as time ran out to raise the dam to the height needed to hold this amount of water.
When the filling is completed spilling over the center of the dam will resume as you can see in this image below from 2020.
On Thursday the UN Security Council will meet for the second time in 2 years to discuss the dispute over the #GERD filling between Ethiopia and Egypt+Sudan. This @AJEnglish report from last year is about the first meeting.
Today's big picture shows the region today including a massive storm over West Sudan and today's storms starting up over Ethiopia's highlands.
Today's 10-Day Rainfall forecasts for North Africa from July 6th through July 17th.
All models are now forecasting widespread rainfall over Yemen towards the end of the forecast period.
This image shows rain over the region over the last 48 hours as measured by satellite [Src @Meteoblue]
48-hour rainfall forecasts (today and tomorrow from the same four models: the Euro @ECMWF, U.S. @NOAA's GFS, Canada's CMC and the Korean KMA models.
And finally for #NorthAfrica we have the long-range 16-day (GFS) and 12-day (KMA) forecasts - which are now remarkably well aligned, albeit with the KMA now forecasting rain across Sudan up to the Egyptian border.
Satellite images from this morning.
The first image shows a glimpse of one of the arms of the #GERD dam lake.
The second image shows the entire area of Nile Basin watersheds, including a massive storm front extending from Sudan to Uganda.
Significant rains are now forecast for Somaliland.
48 Hour forecasts (today and tomorrow) from the same three models. Over this period significant rainfall is not yet forecast for #Somaliland, but it does appear to be coming soon. #Tigray however has widespread rain.
10-Day July 7th, accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC, KMA & ACG weather models showing even more #DesertRain in #Yemen and #Oman.
Our final rainfall forecasts are long range July 6th rainfall forecasts. The16-day GFS & GEFS models, the 12 day KMA and the 15 day EPS (Euro ensemble) model forecasts for the #MiddleEast.
The final animation's today shows an interesting development which may bring #DesertRain even further north in Chad and Sudan in coming days - and a couple of days later in the Western Sahara.
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.
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.