Stormfly

It's over and wow it's melting fast. May not need to plow which would be nice. There WAS a good 4" in the rails, now 2" would be generous. 35/35. Sun angle definitely playing now as we gain over 2 minutes a day of daylight. I need to move north of the 60th parallel!

Imagine if we had these rates for 72 hours. Oh since we're on the imaginary train let's make the temp six above. This is very heavy snow, it's already weighing the spruce limbs down considerably.

Big flakes flyin' for sure! Right at freezing, or just a smidgen above - 32/32 No wind, like falling cotton balls. But as the pics show they are definitely clusters! EDIT: about 2.5" new snow, very clumpy like spuds LOL!

36/23 A bit warm but we're still covered with snow. 5" in the shade, 1-2" in areas getting sun.

It is very bad for the environment! Particularly in the watershed areas and washout to the Bay. Ugh!

Woke up to winter storm warning? Really? I was in Newark (DE) last night and the roads were brined. Quite annoying too at night seeing all the tiny droplets appear on the windscreen needing to use washer/wipers every 10 min or so. Car probably will turn white on the sides before the snow LOL.

I hope so! The geese have been really obnoxious these few days.

That's life threatening cold! The old wind chill scale that would be -75? LOL

Yes, woke up to -13F and no power. They said the power demand peaked over 6.5GW for the BGE area and mandatory rolling blackouts were needed to shed the excessive load. All those chilly folks cranking up those 1500W heaters! I still have the Pelonis disc furnace that I bought back in 1985 due to the big chill we had then. I keep it in the shop, it makes a great load bank to test generators because it pulls 25+ amps for a few sec before the ceramic elements warm up. Only thing worse back in the day when builders put in heat pumps everywhere and no TDRs (time delay relays) were used! A quick interruption in power caused the compressors to stall when restarting against high head pressure. Locked rotor amps on a four ton unit ran around 100A at 240V! Multiply that by a few dozen houses fed off a single 7.2k overhead and a fuse pops and the whole neighborhood is out until a truck rolls to replace it. Thank goodness for TDRs on modern systems and reclosers. In today's electronic age folks would go nuts losing power for a few hours every time there was a little lightning.

Can confirm. Cars coated, pavement a bit slushy from flakes and pingers. If things were normal they'd probably run schools 2 hours late.

1994, remember that well too! Burned through about half of my vacation time because it was impossible to get up the hill from our home! Lots of ice, rain on top of snow, froze solid, snow on top of it. Felt sorry for anyone that had to dig, even the big excavators couldn't move around. And if you fell on a slight incline, better hold on because you were going all the way down! Lots of humming at night, eerie blue-green flashes all around and poof! Spending lots of my younger times at sea I was accustomed to the humming of two stroke diesels so I had no problem sleeping during the long outages. I do prefer the throb of the prime movers though and pity those depending on 3600 rpm natural gas gennies to keep their freezers humming in the south when the big canes tear the overheads down as far as the eye can see. 1977, lived just outside of the beltway (between Carney and Parkville) and remember the freezing over of the inner harbor and Chesapeake Bay! Holy Moly if there is a winter that could be called a mini ice age that was it! People were driving across the harbor! In April we went down to our beach home on Nabbs Creek to be greeted by ice over 5" thick! The air bubblers weren't able to keep up and the dock was in moderately poor shape with lots of heaved pilings.

Yes 1985, when it rains it pours. Not that it was rain but so much weather in just a week's time. From my post earlier, just over two years ago here... Best squall I've experienced in my life was in Harford County MD near Jarrettsville. It was Friday, January 25, 1985. Story time! I just got finished up with dinner. Turned on the TV and was flipping through channels. WTTG (Channel 5 in DC) was always sensitive to sferics and I used that to know in the summer when TRW was nearby or so. Never expected to see white static and crashes through the speaker in Jan. WTF! So I watched and again, not even a minute later, another one! So, I take a look out my den window facing due west and sure enough, I can see lightning in the distance. While this would be no biggie in May, in Jan it is and this area rarely sees thundersnow. As I kept watching, I noticed what I thought was a dog that got loose from one of the neighbors. It waddled closer in and to my surprise it was a HUGE Canadian goose! Well that surely was strange. And then there was another flash that was bright enough that it took my attention off the goose. I noticed a few flurries coming down as well. There were two more flashes and I heard thunder. This was sounding just like a decent thunderstorm approaching in the spring or summer. But! It was snow. And boy did it snow. The streetlights up on the main road disappeared and I thought perhaps the power went out, then the houses across the street completely obscured from view! Not foggy-ish, just gone. Then I realized what was happening. It arrived. What would normally be a torrential downpour was an intense snow squall that was a total white out. Looking out the window was like looking out there with a white sheet over the glass. Simply amazing. There was a blinding flash followed by thunder less than a second later. It was exceedingly blue-white brilliant like a huge high intensity discharge (HMI) lamp starting up. The wind was also roaring. I ran downstairs to my shack and checked and the wind speed on my Heathkit ID4000 was at 49 mph. It was a very high sustained wind during the event. The peak gust was 53mph. The anemometer was mounted at 10 meters on a free standing Rohn 25G tower so those numbers are legit. The funniest part of the story is when I pulled the curtain back to look outside, there was a blinding flash of light and right outside the window was that damn goose! I scared him and he spread his wings and jumped in the air and I nearly fell backwards away from the window. I actually recall screaming, it was that bad. If you've ever seen the movie Free Willy, near the beginning where the kids were at the aquarium painting the tank windows with graffiti and the lightning flashes and Jessie sees Willy for the first time with mouth open and screams, well there you go, that's it right there! Anyhow, after that was over, we had a good 6 or 7" of new snow in well under an hour, 40-45 minutes tops and most of that was in that heavy burst. I would not want to be caught driving in something like that for sure. Those are the kind of *instant whiteout* that cause big traffic pileups on the interstate. Because someone is going to stop and someone isn't. I've never seen this happen before. Have seen thundersnow several times, but that was truly legit and it was wonderful.

Getting another car topper here! It has been snowing on and off day and flirting with the magical 32 number. Even peeking through the clouds, insolation is sufficient to not only clear off plowed asphalt but dry it completely! Looks like the teeth have grown some!

He had to see his shadow, we all know winter is just getting started around these woods. The tradition is certainly going nowhere fast. Human malware may have put a dent in things, but this will most likely survive. And there are plenty of camera lights, there will always be a shadow for him to see! He just has to "say" he saw it. You know, because rats. ;-)

According to Phil, but as luck has it maybe 10 more weeks! And for those living in Whale Cove, Nunavut, well winter lasts well into May! As far as GHD goes, it is on my bucket list, it's not that far of a drive but the virus has ruined the party for them too!

Still light snow falling, it's beautiful out. Winter Wonder Land rating: 100%!

Six more weeks of winter...

Tomorrow is groundhog day!

So I heard the pin oak crackling because it's glazed, caught my attention to the icicles on the gutter looking like ominous teeth! YIKES!

It's slowing down here so I figured I'd try shooting the flakes with a dental blue laser! Wow, first there were glofish now we have gloflakes! I may have to put my iphone on a tripod so I can set the exposure longer and maybe draw something. ;-)

Got back from riding through the trails, trees are nicely coated and a bit saggy but OK. It's a winter wonderland! Yesterday should have been Christmas Eve!

Moderate snow here, lane and road covered over. Close to 7" total. 28/28 Been hearing geese honking most of the day!

Light snow, NE wind @6mph, 28/27.

It actually is very good especially in severe where things matter most. I've seen green/red and been inundated with flakes but I guess it can't be right all the time. Just like a very high precision ultrasonic anemometer here is showing CAT1 winds with gusts near 100mph, all due to ice on the sensor! Normally that is mitigated with resistance heaters but I don't have the power budget for that because the device is 100% off grid and the battery bank doesn't have sufficient watt hours for it. Always a trade off of sorts with instruments. But with 600 samples/min it gives good data for storms.

Been using it since 2010. It definitely has improved. I use it on Mac and PCs too. Before it was available on Android, they had something called PYKL3 which I used. It was very capable as well but I believe the developer discontinued it and Radarscope is prominent. Their support is outstanding as well. Definitely worth the $100 a year for pro+ sub.