The current "Biblical" rain event over Pakistan - which has destroyed 145 bridges and has one third of the country under water began on August 10th - and has the form of a cyclone over land. 17 days of torrential rains. (image: last 24 hours)
This image, also today, shows the scale of the outflows from the cyclonic storm which remains centered around 300kms from the sea and which is fed by atmospheric water coming off the North Arabian Sea. The outflows from the storm are causing devastating flooding further north.
This thread will now look at what happened since the last thread which ended on August 19th. The set up for this catastrophic event involves two cyclones, both of which have remained largely intact over land. Here on the left you can see #Invest04B 2022 (unnamed) making landfall.
These images show #Invest04B crossing India over 4 days - 19-22 August - heading towards the storm over South East Pakistan and Rajastan India.
On the 22nd of August the Storm from the Bay Bengal started to drag the smaller storm over Pakistan into its orbit.
This 22/8 animation shows 24 hours when the storms started to interact - it also shows how the huge storm over the center of India is being fed by streams of water from both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
And the following day, the two storms effectively became one.
In the animation it is obvioys that the storm is strengthening over land. And the area affected by it - over India and Pakistan is colossal 1.3 million km2. Roughly 1% of Earth's landmass - an area larger than Peru, and a little smaller than Mongolia.
On 23-24 August the combined India Pakistan rain storm continued to move west - with the outflow rain bands flowing NNE covering an even larger area.
On the 25th the storm was once again centered over the same area in South East Pakistan where it formed 15 days earlier on the 10th August from a depression which travelled inland from the Arabian Sea.
The intensity of the outflows here is astonishing.
25-26th August.
Yesterday.
And the storm appears to be finally weakening. The circulation appears to be disintegrating.
And 26th-27th August getting us up to date.
The storm has finally gone. Some streams of atmospheric water are still coming north over Pakistan. but this may be finally over tomorrow
As the clouds finally clear it is possible to see what look like the flooded areas from satellite, which are huge. First image is an initial effort to show the obviously flooded areas. 2nd shows it without the measuring boxes.
Here's two high resolution NASA Worldview images for comparison
Left. Satellite image from October 6 2021 for comparison.
Right. Satellite image for today.
A larger image allows you to see more clearly the floodwaters in yellow brown on the LHS of this image.
This area in particular is full of big cities.
I think the worst flooding however will be further south in the South East around Karachi and Hyderabad - where it has been raining very heavily continuously for 17 days.
This area in North West India also appears to be extremely flooded. It has also had heavy rain continuously over the 17 day period.
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.