Hank Scorpio

Joined the Leesburg crew somewhat recently and ready to chime in with a first flakes ob. Getting about 10 flakes a minute, but it's a start

Caught a really nice sunrise rainbow this morning and got soaked in the process, haha.

Looking east from Leesburg I can clearly see the DC cell on the right side of this image. The much smaller cloud popping up on the left side lines up perfectly with the location of the outflow on radar. Maybe something is trying to get going in MoCo?

Neat to watch that hail core pop up right where those two discreet cells collided.

I totally get why some parts of the area require a flash flood watch. The storms have been so hit or miss this week though that some spots in the watch will be just fine, regardless of what happens tonight. For example, the 15 corridor through most of Loudoun missed all week as storms died west of the area and then redeveloped in the eastern part of the county / Western part of Fairfax County.

Haha I thought the exact same earlier. Now I've resigned myself to maybe 10 minutes of heavy rain for the main event. At least it'll be nicer out tomorrow!

Rain almost entirely missed me, but at least the scud put on a good show

Had a pretty good view of the storm as it moved from Ashburn to Leesburg. Couldn't quite beat the storm home, so had to drive through some pretty decent wind and lots of rain, but not too bad really. Now I just need my power to come back on.

Any updates and any luck getting rid of them? I was doing some work around the yard and stumbled across this guy, which I believe is a vole. I also just had a few boxwoods suddenly drop leaves and go brown, which I thought was a watering issue. Guessing their demise was actually the work of voles. Now comes the fun part of figuring out which of the suggested treatment options these voles will respond to.

Wouldn't surprise me if they messed up the silt fencing. Lots of removing and reinstalling the other day when they were grading the lot, which I guess they'll have to do again tomorrow. At least now I know that drain works, haha.

Played the age old "will the silt fencing hold?" game this evening.

Totally agree. So many bugs out there, and so many that I've either never seen before or don't see often. This thing was crawling on a wall the other day and must have been 3-4 inches long. No idea what it is, but it looked like something that shouldn't be messed with.

Was fortunate to get under one of those pulsing cells last night and picked up a quick 0.6 inches, or so says the closest PWS. Also had one of those "thunder simultaneous with the lightning" experiences, which always gets your attention.

You know how the saying goes: January sleet showers bring April flowers and snow showers. Something like that, right?

Those are some fine looking pies, nice work. What temperature are you baking at in the big green egg? I've been using a baking steel for a while now and that made a huge improvement in how me pizza turned out. I just got an Ooni pizza oven though and am really excited to see where that can help me take things. Also, totally agree on the 72 hour cold ferment. The exact same recipe cold fermented for 24 hours vs 72 hours turns out so much better when given more time.

You're very welcome! I make pizza every week and spent a lot of time researching and testing to figure out what I was doing wrong, haha. Always happy to talk technique and answer any questions that pop up.

Two things that might help next time you try. First, try re-balling the dough 6ish hours before you actually wanna make pizza. Good quick video of what that means here. Should help avoid the dough stretching so thin that you get holes. Second, make sure you pull the dough out of the fridge at least a couple of hours before you start stretching it. The number one culprit of dough that doesn't wanna stretch (and ends up too thick around the edges) is being too cold. A close second place culprit is dough that has been handled too much. Also, here's the bacon + gorgonzola + apple pizza I made last week

There are some good videos on YouTube that'll give you an idea of what to expect. But in general, if you have a lot emerge in your neighborhood, there's a loud and constant background noise and big bugs everywhere.

Just went out for a quick jebslide and the freezing mist has certainly made itself known. Interestingly though, where they salted roads in the neighborhood, conditions aren't too bad. Still icy, but with lots of little bits of exposed pavement.

Any chance you might know of a similar resource for VA? I love cruising around topo maps, and even though you're MD based, I figure there's still no one better here to ask about maps.

We didn't get much, if any, snow but same situation here. Plows came through the neighborhood and pushed the 2+ inches of sleet off to the sides, but that just means the streets are a sheet of ice now. Some of that sleet they plowed ended up piled up 6" deep on my driveway apron, so I shoveled that to prevent a mega glacier, but left my driveway itself alone. So much easier to walk on sleet than straight up ice.

12 hours before the storm began, here's what the hourly forecast looked like. Not picking on the NWS here since this is what most were forecasting, but it's actually impressive how differently this storm ended up for a huge chunk of the forum. From winter storm warning with hours of heavy snow expected to a few hours of heavy sleet, quite the difference from forecast to reality.

Third time this winter having been in the LWX 6-8" zone the night before a storm and then ultimately busting way low. Still got to go sledding with my son a bunch this winter which is always fun, but man oh man has it been a winter of unmet expectations. Currently 26 with light freezing rain.

Been freezing rain during lighter returns and mostly sleet during heavier returns in Ashburn. Untreated roads are pretty sleeted up, but anywhere in the neighborhood where they tossed some salt down is totally fine.