kgottwald

When do you think DC-area stores will stop ordering snow shovels and rock salt? Next year? What's the mildest-winter place where stores routinely carry those things?

Huh? The big Veterans Day storm was in 1987 - granted, December was mild and snowless, but we got an inch right after New Years, then 4-8 inches on the 8th accompanied by almost two weeks of serious cold. Another 4 - 6" on January 25th (rain changing to snow, which hardly ever accumulates that much around here), a couple dustings in February with cold snaps, and measurable snow on March 20! 1988-89, granted, was disappointing in the DC area - that was the year that a bunch of storms missed us to the *south*, and Tidewater Virginia got the jackpot (like 1980). Even then, the first week of January brought three light-to-moderate snowfalls, the one on January 6 being slush in downtown DC but three or four inches even in Cleveland Park (I tried to visit the zoo that day to see what it was like in the snow, but it was closed).

High of 61 at IAD. Forecast busted by a whopping ten degrees!

NWS predicted high today was 37. Both IAD and DCA have already reached 42/43. AGW strikes again.

I see it's supposed to rain on Saturday. So much for the solar eclipse. Grr.

Dulles' sensors are going wonky again. No, the dewpoint does not drop 18 degrees in fifteen minutes without a serious frontal passage!

IAD's dry-bulb thermometer or dewpoint sensor keeps going screwy. Registering momentary bursts of DPs in the forties or thirties!

Capital Weather Gang's forecast is for no relief from the blasted humidity for the foreseeable future. God, that's depressing.

Heard two loud thunderbolts earlier, but not a drop fell. On radar it looked like there was a wall along the Fairfax-Loudoun border protecting us from the rain.

I remember thinking that during the five-day April heat wave in 1976. Then the summer was markedly cool, downright chilly at times away from the urban heat island. (Average low at IAD barely broke 60 in July and was a nippy 58.4 in August!) setting the stage for the memorable winter of '77.

If the same pattern occurred todayin March, would DCA hit 100?

Did DCA really get sprinkles at 1 p.m. or was the sensor glitching out?

Tysons still overcast

Way too early in the day for storms!!

From an upper floor of a Tysons Corner office building, I can see a heavy rain shower over Mongomery County.

More overcast to damp things down.

Raining pretty heavily in Merrifield.

On this date in 1984, one of the most spectacular weather events of my youth: four inches of snow in one hour in a thunderstorm.

Looking north from Tysons Corner, I can see the edge of the clouds.

The Wedge wins 90% of the time!

Still in the forties in the DC area with east winds. I smell a bust.

Still only in the 50s in Fairfax County. What happened to the predicted 70 degrees?

What is with every Friday afternoon being blustery and turning colder? Are we stuck in some kind of infinite loop?

. . . and again with the damn clouds. Aren't we going to get a 100% sunny day anywhere in this mild pattern?

Another "sunny" day derailed by unforecasted clouds. Bah humbug.