Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Jul 16, 2021 23 tweets 23 min read Read on X
The magnitude of #ArabianMonsoonBurst is now apparent. A major storm is about to cross the Red Sea and arrive in the #HornOfAfrica. Behind it are two enormous super-cell thunderstorms.

Today's rainfall forecasts follow.
The rain activity shown in the @zoom_earth animation preceding is only radar based, Saudi radar, and in this case is complementary to the @Meteoblue satellite rainfall estimates you see below. There is likely significantly more rainfall in this than you see here.
Here we see India (the heart of this Monsoon), this morning to 10am East Africa Time. I.E. around seven hours ago.
And here a wider view over the Arabian Sea showing the water transport more clearly, which, interestingly is going in both directions. And which may be self reinforcing this process.
The first four GFS PWAT plots today take us to 4am in the morning (they show 10am 4pm 10pm and 4am respectively.

The first thing I notice is there is barely any difference between them. The intensity drops slightly tonight, but that's all.
Here we see the GFS simulation of the PWAT parameter for five days in six hour increments. It peaks after 48 hours (Sunday Night) and then falls away. And the primary trajectory of the water seen here is North West up the Gulf of Arabia.
However as we can see in the satellite imagery this is a multi-layered phenomena we are witnessing with water going in multiple different directions.
The Canadian CMC version of the same PWAT simulation (five days) is at higher resolution and shows a bit more subtlety. It also seems to more closely match what we are actually seeing today at the front end.

Importantly it doesn't show the event decaying nearly as quickly.
And we have a third-way version from the European @ECMWF model.

Extreme weather events, and this is a spectacular one are extremely difficult to model. And in the end as those who live in the region would say, and God knows best.

الله أعلم
Today's big picture takes in all of this plus the ongoing extreme rain event in Europe which while much smaller has already claimed more than 100 lives.
Today's 10-Day Rainfall forecasts for North Africa from July 16th through July 27th. The #ArabianMonsoonBurst can be seen very clearly on the far right of the four accumulated rainfall forecasts.
48-hour rainfall forecasts (today and tomorrow from our standard four models: the European @ECMWF, U.S. @NOAA's GFS, Canada's CMC and the Korean KMA models. The last, skinniest, one is the ECMWF.
And finally for #NorthAfrica we have the long-range 16-day (GFS) and 12-day (KMA) forecasts - which remain remarkably well aligned.

[NOTE: We will have a better view of forecast rain over the southern Arabian Peninsula later in the bulletin.]
Today's July 16th 10-day rainfall forecasts for #Ethiopia (+1 12-day from KMA) and the #HornOfAfrica: #Somalia, #Somaliland, eastern parts of #SouthSudan, south eastern parts of Sudan, #Djbouti and #Eritrea.

Purple areas cover #Tigray & the #Abbay (#GERD) #TekezeAtbara basins.
48 Hour forecasts (today and tomorrow) from the same three models. Rains are now forecast in west and coastal #Somaliland in the KMA model, which seems plausible.
A near live view over the area tonight, as of an hour and a half ago. At the bottom you can see Lake Victoria, the source of the White Nile. This image covers all of the Nile's rainfall basins.
And today's final @zoom_earth satellite animation shows the #ArabianMonsoonBurst at sunset.

[Link to view this area live: zoom.earth/#view=16.8,47.…]
July 16th 10-Day accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC, KMA & ACG weather models.

#ArabianStorms

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

الله أعلم
48 Hour July 14th (today and tomorrow), accumulated rain forecasts for the #MiddleEast from the GFS, CMC, KMA and ECMWF weather models.

#ArabianStorms

#KSA #Yemen #Oman #Jordan #Sudan #Iran #Syria #GERD #Sudan #DesertRain

الله أعلم
And finally we have today's long-range #MiddleEast July 14th rainfall forecasts.

The16-day GFS & GEFS models, the 12 day KMA and the 15 day EPS (Euro ensemble) model forecasts.

UAE rainfall is in the frame in all models & as we saw earlier it is already getting it.

الله أعلم
The GFS (latest complete run) is now the simulation showing the least amount of rain among all these models over 16 days. It will be interesting if the ohter models come into line on this.

NOTE: The GFS has far and away the most sophisticated and tested global model at present.
/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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