Alastair Thompson Profile picture
Aug 27, 2022 22 tweets 9 min read Read on X
#ExtremeWeather Update Thread.

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.
/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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