Stormfly

Summary of DC damage covered here:

Replacement "new design" is up.  It arrived Thursday and I had time to swap it out in this heat!

It looks identical to the old one and I asked if this one was the new design and they assured me it is.  So we will see.

It's been through two decent storms already.  I will update in the future with any issues out of the norm.

2 minutes ago, Kay said:

tropical downpour sub-severe here

Same here.  Some nice thunder but it was over too quick.

1 hour ago, vastateofmind said:

That is indeed a breathtaking picture. I just went digging back through your posting content on your profile...as I THINK you might have been the person to post a picture last winter (maybe the one before?) of the sun rising over a country-ish road, with ice lining all of the tree branches and it, too, was an amazing pic. Am I remembering that correctly?

Probably, I post a lot of pics!

From a friend of mine at Camden Yards.

Looks apocalyptic!

1 minute ago, wxdude64 said:

So, finally had a +90 day yesterday, 90.4 for the high. Then a BIG storm rolled thru, only a 46 mph gust here, but just down the roll about a mile they had 60-70 mph and several trees broken off/snapped. 

That's what we experienced too.  Was in Belair with verified severe gusts (>60mph) yet a few miles west highest gust was just shy of 40mph.  The lightning and rain sure didn't disappoint, however.

Pummeled here in Harford County!

I was across from Upper Chesapeake in DMV parking lot.  64 mph gust on ATMOS Skywatch handheld!  Wicked, eyes watering from sand in parking lot being picked up. Sitting at 1/24 intersection another nice gust shaking the car easily 50+.  Yellow boxes VERIFIED here.

Bigtime CG strikes, several positive in the 100 kA range including a very close one behind Kohls in Forest Hill.

Back home, that cluster that triggered the red box is still producing impressive CG now.

Be careful if you're out and about, there were two trees down on the highway 24 bypass.

Hottest day of the year here so far!

92/74/102

21 minutes ago, 09-10 analogy said:

You have severe weather sirens out there? I usually associate that with places like Oklahoma or Kansas. Of course I've never lived in a semi-rural area ... correct me if I'm wrong if you don't ... so maybe that's de rigueur  in most places.

I remember driving through S/C Oklahoma once, through the town of Frederick. On the SW side of town, every other telephone pole, it seemed, had a speaker. I assume it was for the sirens and that they were located there to warn of storms/tornadoes approaching from the SW. But that's just supposition on my part; maybe there were there just to play selections from a Rogers and Hammerstein musical on Cadillac Day, for all I know. Anyway, the sight of those sirens made me think of tiny vulnerable towns in the Great Plains, which could be suddenly eradicated from existence by a Greensburg/Udall type event, and these little sirens were a brave way of trying to mitigate existential (and usually nighttime) destruction. 

Jarrettsville Volunteer Fire Company would sound their box call siren - at the time a Federal Signal STH-10 - on continuous blast for 5 minutes whenever the area was in a red box (tornado warning). 

After they replaced the STH-10 with a Whelen Omni-Alert OA-2, this stopped.  I guess now with most civilians carrying cell phones capable of receiving alerts they don't bother.

PJM declared level 1 emergency last night anticipating demand reaching 85% of (available) generating capacity.

Got to get through perhaps some "big heat" before Sunday now.

...HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 11 AM TO 8 PM EDT
THURSDAY...
...EXCESSIVE HEAT WATCH IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY MORNING THROUGH
FRIDAY EVENING...

* WHAT...For the Heat Advisory, heat index values around 105 expected.
For the Excessive Heat Watch, dangerously hot conditions with
heat index values up to 110 possible.

* WHERE...Portions of central, north central, northeast,
northern and southern Maryland, The District of Columbia and
central and northern Virginia.

* WHEN...For the Heat Advisory, from 11 AM to 8 PM EDT Thursday.
For the Excessive Heat Watch, from Friday morning through
Friday evening.

* IMPACTS...Extreme heat and humidity will significantly increase
the potential for heat related illnesses, particularly for those
working or participating in outdoor activities.

First heat advisory for us this year.

...HEAT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 11 AM TO 8 PM EDT THURSDAY...

* WHAT...Heat index values around 105 degrees expected.

* WHERE...The Washington and Baltimore Metropolitan areas, central
and northeast Maryland, southern Maryland, and portions of
northern Virginia into the Virginia Piedmont.

* WHEN...From 11 AM to 8 PM EDT Thursday.

* IMPACTS...Heat and humidity will increase the potential for
heat related illnesses, particularly for those working or
participating in outdoor activities.

Nice heavy rolling thundershowers.  Very soothing and the garden loves it.  Feels nice enough to run outside bare naked LOL!

Last time we had "big heat" here was July 21, 2019.

Big heat = flirting with or surpassing century mark.

PM 2.5 back to unhealthy for sensitive groups again IMBY.  The sun was quite orange looking too.

I'm dating myself here but I remember summers in the 70s listening to Orioles games on wcbm and hearing all the crashes from the speaker due to lightning!  Today feels like one of those days!

WF has updated my ticket.  They can ship a replacement out now or if I choose to wait until about the end of July they have a new design with more robust features such as lower internal connection count, anti intrusion screen to keep pests out and updated pressure sensor array.  So (of course) I will wait this out as the unit is working for the exception of the pressure reading.  Hopefully this reliability issue can be solved.

I knew we would be paying for those wonderful days in May and June.

Now it's just getting yucky out.  Can we just hit the FF button to jump to mid October already?

76-77 winter for cold.  Not much snow.  Bay frozen.  People driving on the Inner Harbor!  My cousins lived in a home in Parkville with a flat roof which allowed water to freeze and at night the ice would crack so loud it sounded like someone throwing bricks on the roof!  Could not sleep at all with that nonsense!

PDI - 1979.  Awesome storm.

Let us not forget the fall snow in 1979 that interrupted the Orioles vs. Pirates world series game!

Winter of 81-82 was very cold with some good snow events including a blizzard warning for us with clear skies due to strong winds and blowing snow on ground which drifted roads closed.

Feb 11, 1983 had amazing rates, all snow, took days to dig out.

Jan 25, 1985 super white out "thundersnow squall line"!

Nov 1987 with thundersnow.  Was outside shoveling and the sky flickered a few times, thought it was power lines but heard the thunder.  Thunder is no 60Hz!

Superstorm March 1993.  If it weren't for the "slug-o-sleet" with that one we'd set a (snowfall) record for sure.  Impressive winds too!

93-94 "mini ice age" winter.  I used over 3 weeks of annual leave from work by March for not being able to get in due to ice and snow!

Veteran's Day 1995 high wind to snow event.

Ice storm of Jan 1999.  Over 400k BGE customers without power in freezing conditions.

Jan 25, 2000 "caught with pants down" snowstorm!

PDII - Feb 2003.  What a month Feb 2003 was!

Feb 2006 storm.  What a mess that created with power line damage.

December 2009.  Thought for sure at just six days before Christmas with 19" on the ground we'd have a white Christmas.  Nope!

Back to back blizzards of Feb 2010.  Record setter and IMHO the most impactful week for us in a lifetime here.

Jan 26, 2011.  Very high impact event, >240k w/o power.  Flash freeze and much more snow than forecast. 

2013-2014 winter had lots of good ones.  The ice storm of Feb 2014 hit us particularly bad.  1/2" to 3/4" accretion widespread.  Lots of power outages and widespread tree damage.

2015 had bitter cold but a shortage of snow.

Jan 23, 2016 blizzard.  Most snow in a single event (37" IMBY).  Amazing that we saw this coming for so long and models locked out so far.  Incredible!  Was surreal driving Wed night (when storm didn't start until Friday evening!) seeing those big signs on interstates scrolling BLIZZARD WARNING!  Was I in Maryland???!

There's been a few events since the 2016 but none with high impact.

2018 was full of disappointing storms.

The most recent would be December 2020.  We had good rates but unfortunately the ZR lasted too long keeping totals down and making a mess of things to clean up.
That's what was amazing about the 2016 blizzard.  It snowed 100% and HARD.  No mixing for us.

All that said, I'd have to say the back to back blizzards along with Jan 2016 were probably the best for us.

2 hours ago, peribonca said:

Does anyone have a link to a weather radar that also has local temps? I used to love the Marylandwx.com radar site but it's been down for months

I use Ventusky.

https://www.ventusky.com/

No shortage of rain IMBY!

1.11" so far, still raining.

Was severe warned about an hour ago.  No severe, a few nice strikes, lots of rain.  Breezy at times during the heavier showers.

Was going 10mph on the zero turn to beat the rain too.  Heaviest stuff they said we'd get isn't happening and that's fine with me.  Probably because I cleared out the downspouts haha!

10 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Raining again here. The 9th or 10th time in the last 2 weeks. 

Yes we got crushed by that tiny cluster last night around midnight!  Close to 3" for the day yesterday.

Hopefully tomorrow busts.  Garden plants need to breathe!

But the way it works we'll have 90 mph gusts and cantaloupe sized hail tomorrow.

Just providing an update.  While the unit's battery recovered back to normal today it has experienced a pressure sensor failure.  IDENTICALLY as in the past two prior units.  This makes the THIRD unit in a row that has failed since February of this year and they ALWAYS seem to do this right after a heavy rain!  Uggggh!

Very serious CG here.  Best IMBY since August 17, 2017.
Deluge too, street flooding in Jarrettsville.

Video below from my front porch.  It was a gully washer!  The dormer (roof) valleys were skipping over the gutters and hammering the ground like a legit 3" fire hose.  Garden looks like a swamp.

And it was legit severe because we had hail mostly moth balls but a few ping pong balls (!) in the yard.

Man this blew up out of nowhere.

Getting numerous lightning pings here, looks like some rumbly showers approaching!

Nice storm rolled in, lots of CG, severe warned but no svr IMBY.

0.91" so far, getting ready to rain again.