This thread is about Hurricane Dorian, the storm that was originally forecast to make a devastating landfall on Mar-A-Lago, and which Trump famously claimed was going to head to Alabama.
It was inspired by new imagery which we now have of this happening on @NASA Worldview.
@NASA While Trump was widely ridiculed at the time for suggesting that the storm might make its way to Alabama, initial forecasts did indicate that it would take a path in that direction.
@NASA From my thread at the time (August 28th), the map shown here is the one that he added to in an oval office press conference on September 5th 2021 (Video here >> abc.net.au/news/2019-09-0…), were he added his modified forecast for Hurricane Dorian's path.
In the press conference where Trump presented his rather comically doctored chart he says: "We got lucky in Florida, very very lucky indeed." Which is true. Especially him personally. abc.net.au/news/2019-09-0…
Here we see the track evolution between August 28th and September 1st when the official forecast track finally stayed off the Florida Coast.
Before this course correction for a fairly long period it looked as if there might be a direct hit on Mar-a-Lago [Google maps.. google.com/maps/place/Mar…]
During a 24 hour window from 11pm on 29th August through 11pm on August 30th Mar-a-Lago was directly in Dorian's crosshairs.
Here we see a graphic animation of the path of Dorian at this time (I.E. on August 28th). Dorian is moving fast in a very straight line.
That said cyclones are tricky to predict and even on August 28th the two major global models were not in agreement, and the European ECMWF model was indicating some kind of turn to the north near landfall..
But what actually happened was nothing like either forecast. #Dorian stayed almost exactly on its predicted @NHC_Atlantic trajectory, but slowed down and stopped over the Bahama Islands, where it stayed for several days before turning north.
Here is the forecast path evolution.
Major Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 super hurricane devastated the Bahamas and is thought to have killed at 300+ people (75 confirmed 245 missing) and inflicted 3.4 billion USD in damage. reliefweb.int/report/bahamas….
Anyway that is the untold part of the story of the disaster, and here are the new visuals from @NASA each shows visual satellite data and so we only see the storm during daylight hours.
This first one shows the storm on approach. Slowing but not yet stopped.
This first animation is from Sunday September 1st, the day the storm had been expected to make landfall in Florida. This second animation picks up the path as Dorian makes landfall in the Bahamas and slows down.
And here we see Dorian as he remains stationary for nearly a full day on September 2nd and weakens, losing his eye. Reports during this period from the Island were nearly non-existent as the northern Island group was being battered, especially the area close to the eye wall.
And then finally here we see Dorian finally starting to move again on September 3rd.
At which point it made a 90 degree right turn and headed North instead of West as predicted. In this thread @RyanMaue who is an expert in these things uses the Dorian example to explain the math.
Using Ryan's numbers here the placement of Dorian was within statistical expectations (as it was still within the cone - as it stopped, inside the cone for 48 hours.
Anwyay inc conclusion: 1. Dorian is a great poster child for the hazards of hurricanes, horrific and unpredictable. 2. Donald Trump was exceedingly lucky that Mar-a-Lago was not damaged in 2019
....
.... and 4.
3. His weird press conference on 5th Sept. is understandable given he spent a day thinking his home would be pummelled by the major hurricane.
P.S. here is Trump's full press conference about Dorian, where he presents his modified NHC weather map. [Note its glitchy at the beginning - just wait] c-span.org/video/?463981-…
This is where Hurricane Dorian was when Trump held the press conference, two days after the animations above.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
#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…
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.
This image shows the forecast expected severe weather threat from the remnants of #HurricaneBeryl in Arkansas and Missouri up as far as Saint Louis.
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.
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
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.